Last week I entered a contest sponsored by the Onion AV Club’s local Chicago chapter. The basic premise was that Patton Oswalt would come to the winner’s house with a bunch of pies and film a reading of his book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland for the internets.  There are a lot of links in this opening paragraph.

Back to the contest. I grew excited for several reasons. First, because I have long been a fan of Oswalt’s comedy. I read his book over the summer and enjoyed it quite a bit. I also love pie and appearing in random webseries and online publications. I scoured the rules to see what I needed to do in order to enter.  This is the part where my excitement grew even larger:

Readers (you beautiful people) simply send us a 100-150 word essay succinctly describing why Patton should visit your home for a private reading from his excellent book…

Schwat?!  That was perfect. I am beautiful (thanks for noticing, Josh Modell), and essay contests are my favorite variety of contest.  Writing prose about how awesome I am is a very large portion of my limited skill set!   I once got a college to accept my application with an essay titled, “I Don’t Know Any Professors Who Would Recommend Me, But Here’s an Essay About How Awesome I Am.” That’s an almost accurate representation of what actually happened.

Filled with excitement and the bowl of pasta I had eaten before reading the contest prompt, I opened a word processor and blasted out as short and honest of a treatise as I could muster.

This is the first Google image result for the phrase, "Meta as fuck," that doesn't involve tits

That was 300 words long.  I’m not very good at brevity. Anyone who has read one of my album reviews and thought, “That was about 800 words too long,” would agree (by the way, that person is an asshole. The review was only 820 words long). The 2nd draft managed to shave off a hundred words. I sat and thought for a few minutes and had a stroke of genius. “Let’s go high concept,” I thought.  High concept is my solution for about 70% of life’s dilemas. I’m meta as fuck. It’s really obnoxious.

After a reformatting, this was my sure to win entry into the contest.  150 words after the introduction:

Hello AV Club,
I would like to enter the contest to have Patton Oswalt appear in my home for a private reading of Zombie Spaceship Wasteland on the 22nd of this month. I’m too stuck in verbose scholastic writing mode to be able to keep it to 150 words of prose.  Additionally, in terms of succinctness, no style of writing can beat bullet points.  Lists are brief as hell. That said, here is my essay by way of list of reasons why Mr Oswalt should visit my home:

• I live in Uptown which is known for its gritty urban atmosphere and Art Deco architecture. That will make for solid B-roll.  
• My living room is large enough to easily fit a video crew.
• My apartment is well decorated. I have two paintings of matadors as well as a portrait of a pirate grandma.  
• I have a nice stereo with a slightly impressive record collection.  In his book, Mr Oswalt spoke of his love for R.E.M. and Fugazi. This is a passion that we share. We could listen the hell out of Steady Diet of Nothing.
• I fucking love pie.  It’s my favorite dessert. I frequently request birthday pie instead of cake.
• My friends are very well read.  One is studying literary theory. Another is studying philosophy and has an almost compelling argument in favor of nihilism. Mr. Oswalt could yell at them about Jacques Derrida if he so desired.
  

Sincerely,
Alex D Stewart

I sent off the email and gave myself a one person high five.  I was feeling confident about this.  How could it lose? It covered multiple aspects of why my apartment and I would  be very well suited victors.  It showed a legitimate knowledge of Oswalt’s work. It was also kind of funny and formatted in Georgia font which is widely considered to be a beautiful font.  There’s no way I wouldn’t be victorious.

Fast forward a week.

I didn’t win.

The winning entry was supposed to be announced on October 17th or 18th.  My clock clicked over to 12:00AM on the 19th and my heart sank deep into the nether regions of my torso. Dark feelings filled my soul as years of rejection flooded my thoughts.

No, I’m exaggerating.  But I was still pretty steamed. How is that not an winning entry?  It establishes my rock solid pie loving credentials.  In terms of matador related art collection, I’ve got bona fides out the wazoo! How is that not impressive enough to win? And it was my B-day! I was going to wear a suit.

So tomorrow night, for whatever the reasons, Patton Oswalt and a small camera crew from the AV Club will fill their arms with pies and go to the home of some other Chicago resident to spend an evening reading and laughing. Oh how they’ll laugh and laugh and become best friends who email each other random jokes and observations and Christmas cards. I’ll be sitting here alone on my couch, eating birthday pie and feeling badly about myself.

Well you all have a good time with your pie and laughter.  I hope you choke.

I don’t actually hope you choke.  Swallow and then laugh.  I’m just really disappointed because it seemed like a fun contest that I had a shot at because of the relative comfort of my couch.  Not cool, AV Club. You’re on my list.

The paperback edition of Zombie Spaceship Wasteland will be available on November 8th at any place that one might buy a book.

Visit the AV Club for all of your general entertainment news and criticism.

Sock Monkey Sound

The movie Zookeeper opened this past weekend.  In it the titular zookeeper played by comedy terrorist Kevin James is dumped by a pretty blond lady because she has issues with his chosen career.  After being pressured by his brother and (now ex) girlfriend to quit his job at the zoo and take a sales position with his brother’s fancy car dealership, Mr. Zookeeper decides to walk away from his passion in order to win back the heart of the pretty blond lady.  That is until the animals that he cares for reveal that they can talk and shit.  Wowee what a shock!  In addition to having very well developed English diction, the zoo animals are also apparently experts in playing the dating field.  Under their tutelage, Zookeeper man learns to love himself and develop the confidence that he needs to win back the pretty blond lady and live happily ever after.  Good times, right?

Fuck

That

Noise

Don’t do it, Mr Zookeeper. That plan is clearly incredibly flawed and you will not be happy.

Very poor social skills

First of all, this shouldn’t even have to be said but, don’t take romantic advice from animals.  Do you think a bear and a wolf know how to attract a long term girlfriend?.  Being loud and acting like you’re interested in another lady is how you get someone to sleep with you 2 or 3 times. Zookeeper is clearly looking to get with the pretty blond lady for the long haul (as evidenced by the part where he proposed to her).  He wants to be with her until he dies.  None of the animals giving him advice are of the variety that mate for life.  Plus, having lived in a zoo for what must have been a very long time, their entire perspective on mating rituals is based on the skewed experience of dating within a captive population.  There are only so many of one’s type in the limited population so it doesn’t pay to be picky.  It’s the same reason that people living in small towns are more likely to get married at a younger age than those in large cities.  That lion wouldn’t know shit about macking on a lioness in the African savanna.  They totally lack the experience required to give good advice.

Zookeeper needs to think long and hard about why he wants to be with the pretty blond lady.  I suspect that the answer is, “Durrr she looks really nice,” which is a terrible fucking reason for dating someone; let alone marrying them.  Zookeeper man needs to seriously reconsider whether he wants to be with someone as callow and materialistic as Pretty Blond Lady.  She thinks his job is on par with being a janitor. Repeat that. She thinks his job that he earned a degree in Zoology in order to hold and is clearly very skilled at performing (the bear said so) is equivalent to being some stockroom worker at Walmart.  She thinks his chosen profession is deserving of derision and pity because he doesn’t make enough money to buy her massages and Louis Vuitton bags, or Louboutin pumps and fancy dinners.  Why would he want to be with someone who doesn’t respect him?

From the options put forth in the trailer, Zookeeper Fellow’s pursuit of the pretty blond lady can go one of three ways:

1. He fails.  We’re back at the beginning.

2. He takes that sales job at his brother’s expensive car dealership.  He does fairly well (because the skills required for zoo-keeping and selling cars totally crossover).  The increased paycheck impresses Pretty Blond Lady and she agrees to take him back.  Let’s say they even get married. He spends the rest of their relationship feeling resentful because she made him give up his dream job in order to be with her.  He is unhappy at his new job and no amount of sexy body touching can take away the feeling that he is paying for their marital sex.  She walks all over him because she knows she was able to get him to give up his dream and will do anything she asks. His resentment begins pushing her away and their marriage ends cold and unfulfilled.

3. He uses the animalistic tactics of roaring, intimidating any supposed competition, and peeing on things to win her renewed affection.  She is attracted to his new personality and is able to overlook his career.  They marry.  He reverts back to his normal earnest, happy go lucky, magnanimous personality.  She becomes disenchanted because he is not the man she was attracted to when they wed.  Sex becomes a chore and, soon enough, so does normal every day interaction. She loses interest and divorces him or begins a secret affair with someone who is more her type. OR he maintains the fierce, alpha male persona but grows to feel that he can never be himself around her.  The forced confidence and menace curdle into insecurity and jealousy.  He begins accusing her of cheating on him with every male she encounters.  Tired of the accusations she either divorces him or (feeling as though she is being punished for a crime she didn’t commit) resigns to cheating on him with someone who is more her type.

The fact remains that the pretty blond lady does not respect or even understand Zookeeper’s passion for keeping zoo.  Even if he is able to win her over temporarily, this will not change.  A zebra does not change its stripes.  He should ask the zebras. They’ll tell him as much.

Very Attractive

Mr. Zookeeper should view his failed relationship with Pretty Blond Lady for what it was, a lesson in identifying the kind of women that he does/will not do well with.  He should continue looking until he finds a woman who not only doesn’t have to ignore his job in order to find him appealing, but actually does so because of it (There’s a chance that the film positions Rosario Dawson as such a woman but that’s a bad idea. Rosario Dawson is super hot.She would never be attracted to his squishy, oblong head and beady little eyes.  Never ever ever).

The Zookeeper needs to hold out until he encounters a woman who shares his passion for wildlife and is attracted to his amiable personality and offbeat looks.  There is totally a future Mrs Zookeeper out there. Probably on the internets.

Don’t see The Zookeeper.  Ever.

Sock Monkey Sound

File Photo: Filmmaker Extraordinaire

Every few weeks or so I’ll advise the burgeoning indie filmmaker on using music in your films that will trick your art school peers into thinking you have

• artistic courage
• depth
• unique perspective
• or all of the above

You’ll be the hit of Manifest 2012 and probably get a B on your final project!

Class #1:  David Bowie’s Queen Bitch

Use this song to score a montage depicting the acquisition of heroin (ending with the song fading out as the character shoots up and slumps back in his chair), or the unexpected coupling of two young characters after a rowdy night out with their social circle (extra points if the last note coincides with one of the characters waking up the next morning and realizing their mistake).

Having the character float up to the ceiling is optional if you have a crane budget.

The are a couple of things about Queen Bitch that make it perfect for montages.  First, it’s a very well known song but not so universally well known among people whose introduction to indie music was Arcade Fire (i.e. your intended audience).  First, The beat is quick and propulsive but not overly complicated. This will impart a frenetic energy if you set many of the cuts to it.  It will make people think of dancing. Secondly, Queen Bitch sounds dirty.  There’s something in Bowie’s voice and the tone of Mick Ronson’s guitar that just makes people think of glitter stuck to sweaty body parts.  Drug deals and bar hookups tend towards the sleazy side of things and Glam Rock will depict this in a way that is seemingly more thoughtful than hip hop.

Alternately, if you are making a film about the creative process, use it to score the opening credit montage of the protagonist waking up and going through his pre-writing rituals.  End with the protagonist sitting down at his desk and staring at the blank computer screen, unable to write.   This use hinges on the inherent dichotomy of tone.  The sleaze and boogie will sit in sharp contrast with the boring goings on of a character getting dressed and making coffee.  The audience will expect danger or swagger and the division between that expectation and the reality will be notable.  After that, the hearty boom of the ending of the song will seem antithetical against the inaction of the character.  That’s two forms of dichotomy. You genius!!

Existential Crisis

Using Queen Bitch in this way will impress your friends but you’ll know the secret. You learned it from the internets!!

Sock Monkey Sound

Apparently the current face of evil

I finally broke down and listened to that Rebecca Black song. I had been boycotting it because, “Who cares about some girl’s dumb song?”  Then I realized that by actively avoiding it I was actually giving it more thought and abstract value than such trifle deserves.

So I listened to it.

What is everyone’s problem?  Yes, it is a really shitty song.  There is no denying that. But it is by no means dramatically worse than any other similar pop song.  It sounds exactly like one would expect a little sister pastiche of Beiber’s Baby and Ke$ha’s We R Who We R to sound like.  The two songs I just name checked are very, very, bad.  So is this song.  What’s the issue? The vast majority of pop music is shit.  It is intentionally created to be disposable and the listening populace acts accordingly.

One can’t even bemoan the pop music universe that has sunk low enough to let Friday be popular. The song isn’t exceedingly successful.  So far it has peaked at #57 on the Billboard Digital Songs chart and #72 on the Hot 100 (where it sits between songs by Glee and Kenny Chesney).

Oh, no! This shoddy song is mildly successful. What has the world come to?! Grrrrrr!

That was my impression of people who have had anything resembling an impassioned reaction to the song.  I wrote you people a letter.

Dear Internets,

Get over yourself.  Find something more important to worry about.  Here, I’ll help you by suggesting a topic that doesn’t even require you to direct your anger towards something other than shitty music: Did y’all realize that the current #1 song by Lady Gaga is kind of racist? Have fun.

Yours Truly,

Alex Danger Stewart

Sock Monkey Sound

Dear Beloved Readers,

I recently wrote this for a Critical Art Review assignment in my Art in Chicago Now class.  Enjoy.

"Wee Jim's Black Eye"(1986) and "Hee-Man" (1979)

On January 29th of this year, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago opened two large scale exhibitions related to the work of the American artist Jim Nutt.  The first, Coming into Character is a showcase of Nutt’s artistic evolution over the course of 40 years and focuses largely on Nutt’s female portraiture. The latter is a fairly extensive companion exhibition that shows works that both influenced Nutt and were influenced by him. Seeing Is a Kind of Thinking: A Jim Nutt Companion aims to place Nutt in a specific historical context by present the broader cultural universe which informed Nutt’s aesthetic and artistic philosophy.

Jim Nutt came to prominence in the mid 1960s as a part of Chicago Imagist movement (a term that has been applied retroactively) within the group who dubbed themselves, “The Hairy Who.”  A very important consideration one must make when viewing or thinking about works from the Chicago Imagist movement is its position as one of the very first visual arts movements in which artistic innovation was centered in and influenced by the city of Chicago.  Along with this very ethnic, working class, metropolitan

Miss P Willow, 1968

aura, it is important to note the way in which the Imagists (and especially those within The Hairy Who) incorporated a very comical, irreverent processing of low culture and pulpy art mediums through a synthesis of Art Brut and Surrealism.  As somewhat of a reaction to the New York Pop Art scene, The Hairy Who took the idea of repositioning a mass culture visual cue and personalized it; using personal signifiers such as the graphic, cartoony style of pinball machines at a local amusement park (or the tattoos of labor class immigrants) to give their work a more heartfelt edge.  In recognizing this innovation, one can see a similar design style in the animating of the cartoon Beavis and Butthead or the illustrations of Magnus Carlsson and recognize the wide reaching influence of an artist like Jim Nutt’s early work.

My visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art took place on a day that was brutally cold. I mention this because it can be a little trying to put oneself in an appreciatory mindset when one’s body is trying to navigate the transition from bracing winds and ear-numbing freeze to the highly regulated, temperate setting of a museum.  I’m not necessarily saying that environmental forces made me a bit grumpy which may have caused a harsher reaction than I might have had during a mild spring visit.  On the other hand, the environmental forces made me a bit grumpy and judgmental.

Though it includes work spanning his entire career, Coming into Character gives far more focus on Nutt’s series of, “imaginary portraits,” which have been his primary means of expression since the mid to late 1980s.  I think this repetitious setting actually did some disservice to the portraits.  Through a couple dozen paintings and drawings presented on various formats (the assorted media included canvas, linen, fiberboard, cardboard, and metals) Nutt’s work shows the minute exploration of an expressionistic female head and shoulders.  Common forms are repeated in the nose, brow, and posture of each portrait while color, hair, and expression vary wildly from one figure to the next. My pretentious assessment of the reoccurring forms is that Nutt may have been using the fictional females to express an embodiment of changing characterizations within some unnamed person’s psyche (perhaps the author himself?).  There is no indication of this theme anywhere in the literature, which suggests that I’m probably far off the mark.

Trim, 2010

One particular painting within this series that caught my eye in a strong way was a recent work called Trim. Finished in 2010, Trim is acrylic paint on linen and a fiberboard frame.  It is a smaller portrait that is nearly square in shape (25 3/8” X 24 3/8”).  The actual pictorial aspect of the piece is even smaller, resting several inches from the border of the frame. This has the effect of drawing the eye inward and requiring the viewer to approach the piece in order to view from a very close vantage point.  The portrait is filled with cool greens and blues and the ¾ profile depiction of a pale woman painted with mostly rigid, graphic inspired lines.  She wears a shirt that is covered by an elliptical dot print.  Her prominent, angular nose is covered with a similar print and has great, dark drips running from the bridge to the tip.  The woman’s eyes stare straight out at the viewer, their different colored retinas holding a slightly, “Hi there,” gleam while the blasé position of her mouth and a slightly tilted eyebrows suggest that she’s a bit too cool to be caught worrying about some sort of nasal deformity. “Oh this,” she mutters, “This is just a fashion statement.”

Something that I enjoyed about Trim (and that made it stand out from the pack) is this seeming harmony in theme.  I obviously can’t speak to whether or not the piece was created with any intended thematic elements.  Unlike some of Nutt’s early work like the painting Hee-Man (in which he poked fun at notions of masculinity by pushing then to vulgar extremes) any symbolism that exists within the, “imaginary portraits,” does so on a more subtle level.  Certainly the most obvious thought to have while viewing such a work is, “What is she thinking?”  Then the brain begins to spitfire, “She’s bored and wants to get back to applying the thick makeup that makes the lower half of her face so pale.”

“She actually does seem pretty cool. I like her choppy haircut.”

“Maybe she’s shy and that furrow of the brow is discomfort.”

“I wonder if a puppy is involved in this.”

Though the options of personal interpretation are clearly almost limitless, an overriding element of reserved, detached feeling runs through almost all options.  Even on such a broad theme, Nutt may not have left the cultural references of his early career entirely behind.  With such a combination of color and expression, I don’t feel remiss in drawing slight lines of influence to mid era Henri Matisse and his use of restrained blues, greens and greys. It’s not a great leap from Trim to a work like Matisse’s Woman in Green.

A fault I did find within the Exhibit was what I found to be an over repetition of the aforementioned imaginary portraits.  I would venture to guess that having so many similar pieces placed next to each other causes a blurring of the mind, with thoughts of each piece squishing into the next one until they all end up a big pile of, “hmm, that’s pretty good.”  Were I to encounter Trim on its own or near one or two other similar works, I do believe its beauty would have been far more striking.

Coming into Character will continue to run at The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago until May 29 of this year.

For more information on the  Jim Nutt Exhibition or other exhibits, visit mcachicago.org

Sock Monkey Sound

In last year’s list, I commented on my newly found dedication to immerse myself in new music.  This year acted as a continuation and expansion of that dedication.  In assembling the list, I found myself with somewhere in the range of 30 albums that I enjoyed and had to consider for the top spots.  Does this mean anything to you, the dear reader?  It’s hard to say.  Probably not but I have to question your motivation in indulging my already established myopia (excluding those of you who are first time readers or indulging in some morbid curiosity:  Hi. Welcome. I <3 you) if you have issues with personal narrative as record review.  Where last year was dominated by cerebral, super well crafted pop and indie rock, this year takes a step towards the raw.  Whether it was a rawness of emotions (releases by now reliable veterans like The National and Frightened Rabbit) or that of style and production (staticy blasts of youth from Male Bonding, Titus Andronicus, and Dum Dum Girls), my listening was largely dominated by various acts of flagellation and uplift.

In that order.

Repeat.

*Fair warning: Zero portions of this list make mention of releases by Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire, anything connected Animal Collective, or whatever the hell Chillwave is.  I either thought they were not as good as other releases, hated them, or didn’t listen because of philosophical or moral issues.  You can decide amongst yourselves which is which.*

Top 10 Albums

1. The National-High Violet: The members of the National worry about a lot of things.  They have responsibilities and they’re afraid.  That these themes have been explored in full throughout all of The National’s releases over the past 5 years is of little consequence.  High Violet comes across as a summation of everything the band has strived to be.  That the same themes of self doubt and alienation are presented in such a lush, spacious, beautiful manner is of full consequence.  To say that the songs slowly burn their way through one’s psyche as they deliberately build and retreat is hyperbolic, but only slightly.  I previously described this album as both a scalpel and suture for one’s mental wounds and it remains true.  High Violet offers little unearned catharsis. Songs often end in a whisper rather than a triumphant roar.  When it does allow the listener moments of healing, they feels all the stronger for it.  Over a hushed, gorgeous arrangement on, “Runaway,” Matt Berninger sings, “No, I won’t be no runaway.  Cause I won’t run.  No, I won’t be no runaway.  What makes you think I enjoy being led to the flood?  We got another thing comin’ undone, and it’s taking us over.”  At first it’s a fearful declaration, evoking the things that can go wrong when love instills the dedication to follow someone anywhere.  Over and over, upon itself, the refrain is repeated, finally instilling a quiet confidence of survival.  I loved this album six months ago because of the unstoppable way it poked and validated my frailties.  The more I listen, the more it feels like the inklings of a road toward feeling okay.

2. Titus Andronicus-The Monitor: If punk rock has one overriding motif, it’s that of Us v Them.  Titus Andronicus took in their first album (2008’s The Airing of Grievances) and blew it up to epic proportions on The Monitor.  Andronicus takes the concept of our nations ultimate instance of Us v Them, telling the story of doomed battalions in the American Civil War and what it means to be young and confused in today’s America; contrasting the fate of a literal lost generation (620,000 young men died in the civil war during a time when the United States population hovered around 27 million people) with that of the figurative, directionless bewilderment of most youths over the last 60-100 years.  When singer Patrick Stickles bellows, “Rally round the flag,” he speaks not only of sailors standing fast on the gun deck of the beached USS Minnesota, but of anyone banding together against the forces of fear,  depression, and an unknowable future. Those who are overeducated and undersexed, searching for anything but nihilism.  The Monitor’s US incorporates anyone who needs an anthem to battle against the Them of confusion and the death of hope.  Stacking quotations from Walk Whitman, Jefferson Davis, and Abraham Lincoln up against references to Billy Bragg and Bruce Springsteen, Andronicus urges us to fight against these metaphoric enemies spread everywhere, even if only for one song.

3. Superchunk-Majesty Shredding: Superchunk are better than the vast majority of bands.  I’m not even going to bother debating that fact.  Every year they release an album is a year that ends with a Superchunk release in the top ten.  Some have dismissed the outpouring of affection for this record as being mostly fueled by nostalgia; as if its praise is similar to the way that Rolling Stone gives every new Springsteen release 4 stars.  I would like to kick those people in the shins.  Anecdotal evidence is often weak but I’m going to use it anyway.  I’ve only become aware of Superchunk as a thing that exists within the past 7 years.  My love for the chunk is entirely based in the present and I will attest as strongly as I can that this album is equally as good as On the Mouth or Foolish. It is noisy, joyful, and invigorating in ways that every indie rock band must strive for but will never match.  If Majesty Shredding cannot make you smile, you are one sad motherfucker.

4. LCD Soundsystem-This is Happening: Speaking of Us v Them, the latest (and potentially last) LCD Soundsystem takes the battle to the hearts of those who think it is not possible to shake one’s ass while feeling introspective.  This is Happening is filled with 12” club mixes dedicated to your sometimes grumpy, often wry older friend who likes to get drunk and make self serving references to the Berlin Sessions.  This is Happening is that one house party where your professional friends got super loose and danced until one accidentally vomited in the kitchen sink.  It’s the smartest paean to making mistakes you’ll hear this year.  There are times for words and times to shut up and dance.  This is Happening ends up being both.

5. Male Bonding- Nothing Hurts: I previously described Male Bonding as, “loud, fast, and dirty.  The tones are skuzzy and the songs are short.”  Nothing Hurts is grimy lo-fi made by three young English gents.  If I wanted to intellectualize it, I’d suggest that the album acts as a refutation of the pain expressed by Titus Andronicus and The Promise Ring’s seminal 2^nd album by arguing that any pain can be pushed away if you just turn up the volume.  I have no interest in intellectualizing this album.  It’s a punk album, first and foremost.  The songs are catchy and the songs are muddy.  The noise washes over everything and batters the walls a bit, and then it’s over.  It sounds like a lost release from the Sup Pop Singles Club filtered through a broken reverb pedal.  These are good things and, like Shoegazer Jon, I spilled my beer.

6. Beach House-Teen Dream: Beach House sound like a warm summer breeze.  Lush and warm, they’re the sunlight peaking through a curtained window during a late afternoon nap.  Like many albums on this list, Teen Dream finds Beach House taking the aesthetic of prior albums and purifying it; finding the most direct means of communication and running with it.  Smooth guitar lines ping into the distance as warbled organ alternates between fuzzy, muted drone and icy stabs of melody.  Singer Victoria Legrand’s voice is the most upfront it has ever been, wrapping everything in a caramel blanket.  This is dream pop at its most literal; sounding like those quiet seconds after one has awoken but yet to open their eyes.  It’s also a fantastic make out record.

7. Surfer Blood-Astrocoast: In a year when drum machine duos, and bands dripping with reverb and 1988 were all the rage, Surfer Blood’s debut has a sound that could be popular at any point within the Indie rock era.  Mixing influence from garage rock, Weezer’s golden era, and the new wave of The Cars, Surfer Blood shows that one doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel to make it roll (worst metaphor ever!) .  Astrocoast is a record for couches, and car seats, or whatever people mean when they say, “chilling out.”  The tempos are easy and the melodies even more so.  What’s impressive about this record is how (a)live it sounds.  It’s the sound of a tight band going into a studio with a few guitars and keyboards and just playing.  Such things are difficult to fault.

8. Deerhunter- Halcyon Digest: Deerhunter are a psych pop encyclopedia in a time when standing out has been increasingly muddled by every yahoo with a Syd Barrett album, a pedal board, and a cursory knowledge of Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine (Hi).  Bradford Cox seems aware of this conundrum and responded by pairing down some of the aggressiveness of Deerhunter’s prior releases and replacing it with songs that are really fucking good.  Why hasn’t everyone come up with such a solution?  Sometimes the songs on Halcyon Digest are obscured by static and sometimes they breathe through in their shimmering glory.  Few things connect songs like the rollicking boogy of, “Coronado,” with the epic, mystical beauty if, “He Would Have Laughed,” but Cox and Deerhunter have the mastery to make them one and then same.

9. Dum Dum Girls- I Will Be: The debut from Dum Dum Girls is fuzzy and hissy in familiar ways.  The concept of 60s pop songs sounding like a tape cassette left out in the sun is nothing new but Dum Dum Girls figured out a way to take the form to new heights.  Filled with tales of bad girls, best friends, and love lost, I Will Be manages a fairly astounding feat by putting emphasis on writing songs as good as those that inspired them instead of focusing on the noise that obfuscates them.  There is no denying the giddy pleasure of songs like, “Bhang Bhang, I’m a Burnout,” “Jail La La, and, “It Only Takes One Night.”  Under everything else, I Will Be is bubblegum bliss.

10. Frightened Rabbit-The Winter of Mixed Drinks: Do we really need to discuss the appeal of Frightened Rabbit?  Remember how great The Midnight Organ was?  This album is just as good.  From the full bodied uplift of, “Swim Until You Can’t See Land,” to the lingering discontent of, “Foot Shooter,” these are songs that don’t stop building until they tumble over the end.  They sound and feel like the brogueish stories of a man who has seen some, but not all, of what life has to offer and must come to terms with the rest.  As the title suggests, this is an album for January nights spent next to the fire with a glass and a story.

Just missed the 10

1. Crankupmadonna-Hit the Sound

2. The Thermals-Personal Life

3. Wild Nothing-Gemini

4. No Age-Everything in Between

5. Mavis Staples-You Are Not Alone

6. The Walkmen-Lisbon

7. John Legend & The Roots-Wake Up!

8. Dr Dog-Shame, Shame

9. Best Coast-Crazy for You

10. Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin-Let it Sway

20 Best Songs

1. She & Him-Theives

2. The National-Afraid of Everyone/Bloodbuzz, Ohio

3. Mavis Staples-You Are Not Alone

4. Cee Lo-Fuck You

5. Jim O’Rourke feat Haruomi Hosono- Close to You

6. LCD Soundsystem- Pow Pow

7. Kayne West (featuring everyone ever)-Monster

8. Regina Spektor-No Surprises (Radiohead cover)

9. Wild Nothing- Summer Holiday

10. Male Bonding-Crooked Scene

11. The Mynabirds-Numbers Don’t Lie

12. Best Coast-Boyfriend

13. Surferblood- Swim

14. The Thermals-Your Love is So Strong

15. Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin-All Hail Dracula

16. Girls-Broken Dreams Club

17. Dum Dum Girls-Bhang Bhang I’m a Burnout

18. Sex Bob-omb- Garbage Truck

19. Crankupmadonna-One Good Lie

20. Sufjan Stevens-Too Much

Local Considerations (aka bands who had fantastic releases and you got sick of me writing about)

1. Joie De Vivre- The North End

2. Geronimo- Fuzzy Dreams

3. Mountains for Clouds-Some People Buy Scenery Like This

4. Staasanator Rex-62

Why in blue blazes wasn’t Lisbon in your Top 10?

That’s a fair question because I get the feeling that Lisbon is an amazing album.  Honestly all the blame lands on The Walkmen for this one.  They know of my well established timeline for appreciating their albums.  I can never fully realize the quality of a Walkmen album until I’ve listened to it for 6 months.  If they really wanted to make my top list, they would have released Lisbon in June or earlier instead of September.

Someone hire this guy an editor

Sufjan Stevens-The Age of Adz: At some point during the last three years Mr. Stevens completely lost his faith in the ability for normal songs to convey any meaning.  That’s awesome. Existential crisis always makes for compelling, interesting music unless your name is Metallica.  Stevens apparently decided that the way to solve this crisis was by setting out to soundtrack a non-existent animated reimagining of Blade Runner (my explanation).  That is also awesome because just read the preceding sentence.  The Age of Adz has a lot of straight up amazing ideas and musical moments.  The only problem is that these moments of genius are strangled by the sheer bulk of ideas.  There are so many things happening that, in the process of making it from beginning to end, one forgets that the amazing moments happened.  It’s like one of those days when you’ve worked for 12 hours and come home having forgotten that seeing those two pigeons having sex on the sidewalk happened that very morning and not last week.  If a glut of ideas are chins, this album has more chins than my Aunt Brenda at Thanksgiving.  It has twelve songs, one of which is 25 minutes long and is followed by a six minute song.  That’s not a thing musicians can do, Sufjan. It doesn’t work.  I like to pretend that there was a release called The Age of Adz EP.  It contains, “Too Much,” the title track, “All For Myself,” and, “Ring Them Bells.”  It’s amazing.

ADS

Sock Monkey Sound

America!

Rankin/Bass Present: The Year of Two Thanksgivings

By Alex Danger Stewart Thanksgiving as we know
it, that of an annual Autumn holiday has existed since the civil
war. Prior to the 1860s, the holiday was declared
intermittently by executive order. Drunk with holiday power
(a cheap seasonal whiskey), James Monroe declared 10 holidays of
Thanksgiving during his 8 year presidential career [citation
needed]. Beyond that, regional traditions celebrated
basically whenever they pleased.
Beloved Article 1:
Section 9 opponent and youth basketball star,
Abraham Lincoln, first declared an annual national day of

Invented Thanksgiving, had a great outside J

Thanksgiving celebration on the last Thursday of November,
1863. Basically saying, “Even though our country is
split in half, we’re still God’s favorite. Give
thanks,” the executive order called for every community
to come together and be thankful for our freedom and general lack
of Spanish invasion. Every subsequent president in the history of
ever thought Lincoln’s designation of the last Thursday in November
to be darn near perfect and never strayed from the schedule. That
is, until the presidency of one Franklin Donald Roosevelt.
Roosevelt’s presidency was faced with many threats in 1939.
The foremost of all being that year’s November contained 5
Thursdays (This had apparently never happened before in recorded
history). Hoping to secure his place in history as the
president who pulled the United States out of a decade long
depression without joining any gigantic wars, Roosevelt theorized
that the extra week of Thursdays might be utilized for buying lots
of things. Under the watchful eye of Fred Lazarus, Jr
(founder of the Federated Department Stores, which would soon
become Macy’s Inc), FDR broke the heart of Lincoln’s corpse and
declared the 2^nd to last Thursday of
November to be 1939’s Thanksgiving Day so as to allow Americans an
extra week of the Christmas shopping season. Congressional
Republicans lost their mother-loving minds (it is inappropriate to
characterize their reaction as, “losing their
shit,” on such a holy day). Why wouldn’t
they? Changing a nebulous designation to the week prior was a
slap in the face to all true American Patriots (This being the old
times, there were a significantly larger number of those
around). A November 23^rd Thanksgiving
was an affront to the memory of Abraham Lincoln whose ghost had his
heart set on celebrating on the 30^th that
year. The issue split the country in half, some planning to
celebrate the, “Real Thanksgiving,” or, “Republican Thanksgiving,”
on the 30^th as they should and others
(Mostly those governed by New York Democratic cronies) chose to
celebrate the illegitimate “Franksgiving.” Actual terms used.

Didn’t care about Lincoln’s feelings

No,
seriously. 23 states went along with Roosevelt’s declared
holiday, 22 celebrated on the 30^th, and the
remaining four states (including a surprisingly wishy-washy Texas)
were geniuses and took both days off as government holiday.
Never since the very first Thanksgiving, 3 score and 16 years
prior, had the country been so deeply divided. The
controversy continued the next year (a thankfully 4 Thursday’d
November) when Roosevelt declared the third Thursday to be our day
of Thanks. The minority Republicans of congress revolted
again and organized celebrations on the day they were supposed to
be had, god dammit. I’d like to think no one in the country
slept quite as peacefully that night as they might have were they
joined in celebrating by all patriots on the same day. Roosevelt
knew this to be a blotch on his public approval and moved to solve
the issue through legislation. Finally in October of
1941 (Just two months before the attack on Pearl Harbor) The House
of Representatives passed a bill stating that Thanksgiving would
return to the traditional last Thursday of November from then on
out. The Senate would have none of that malarkey and
countered with an amendment placing Thanksgiving on the
4^th Thursday of every November (that they
voted on this version of the bill in mid December 1941 seems odd to
me but I’m not quite sure why..) which meant it was sometimes on
the last Thursday and sometimes on the 2^nd
to last depending on whether God was feeling saucy when planning
the months that year. President Roosevelt signed the bill on
December 26, 1941, establishing the date of Thanksgiving
as a federal law. At long last
Americans could forget the Family-dividing tragedy of Thanksgiving
debate and focus on other issues, of which I’m sure there were
probably some. The End. ADS

Sock Monkey Sound

Sometimes
a writer does and thinks things that are worth writing about but
not necessarily worth dedicating an entire posting or article
to. This is one of those times.

What: Brendan Benson, The Posies,
Aqueduct at The Bottom Lounge Where
That? 1375 West Lake St, Chicago, IL
When: November 6 What
was awesome about this show? I got in for free!

Do you, dear readers, ever go to random concerts just
because you can? I did.

Aqueduct: I’m tempted to just write,
“Aquesucked,” and leave it at that. In short, I did not care
for this band. They were doing a vaguely Ben Folds, keyboard,
bass, and drums sort of thing. I had two problems with the group.
The first was that they wrote songs that were not very good.
The 2nd was that they were lazy. Every song that I saw
was augmented by additional laptop instrumentation that could have easily been played by a 4th musician. There was also an
ill-planned song that “mashed up” Jay-Z’s Big Pimpin with the Bob
Willis song, Take Me Back to Tulsa. Why? I actually
asking. Who thought that was a good idea? I wrote in big
letters in my notebook, “I wish this was actually Hova.” So
yeah, Shit Sandwich.

The Posies: Do you know what’s cool about the Posies? They sound like every song from the Reality Bites soundtrack. Do you know what’s not cool about the Posies? Lots of other things. One hears them and processes the sounds as a constant stream of, “1993,1993,1993.” The Posies are from a time when power pop meant fuzz pedals. In an alternate timeline where I was born 10-15 years earlier and work at my neighborhood record store, I describe the Posies as being, “..like a Washington thrift store version of Teenage Fanclub.” That’s kind of a compliment. The 2010 version of the band looked and sounded exactly the same, except puffier. Singer/guitarist Ken Stringfellow prefaced one song with the statement that it was, “..from what I think is probably our best album, the new one.” I haven’t listened to the album but I suspect he was incorrect because the song was not as good as Dream All Day. In short: the best thing about The Posies is that frontmen Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow were in the reformed Big Star. The 2nd best is that their band is pretty fun.

Brendan Benson
I have to admit, I wentinto this knowing almost nothing about Benson’s music. I listened to and greatly enjoyed The Raconteurs’s first album and mostly enjoyed their 2nd. My familiarity with his solo output is much more limited. I listened to the songs on his Myspace
page, thought, “hmm power pop,” and then watched TV or listened to something else (I’m a total professional). That’s what I went
into the concert expecting. Catchy melodies, 70s influenced
rock and roll, the Beach Boys and The Who. My expectations were not defied. Well, my musical expectations weren’t. You know what
was surprising? Brendan Benson is a dainty little fellow.

Ladies, am I wrong?

He’s really thin and delicate like a pretty lady with a beard. I bet the women of the audience appreciated that. Benson was joined on stage by Auer and Stringfellow of the Posies, and a well dressed drummer. From the opening song two things were quite clear:

1. Benson wasn’t totally into it that night. He looked distracted and complained several times about onstage feedback.
2. My musical expectations were dead on. I’m not going to complain about either, though. The first is justified. It was fairly chilly out that night and monitor feedback is annoying as hell. I have pretty good instincts so the second seems reasonable as well. I do wish Benson had been touring with a larger lineup. The songs were certainly enjoyable in their hooky ways but many of the arrangements screamed for horn parts, or steel guitar, or additional keyboard/organ goodness. I know these elements have appeared in Brendan Benson recordings so it was somewhat disappointing that the group was not better able to fill those holes live. My research didn’t extend to memorizing the title of every song in his catalogue so here’s what the set list would look like if I had titled the songs:

1. Cheap
   Trick
2. Ahh-ohh/Big Star
3. Wilco the Song
4. Do You Want to Know a
   Secret?
5. Kiss
6. Sugar Pie
   Honey Bunch
7. Everything You Love
8. This is a Mouthful
9. Don’t Let Me
   Down
10. Target Commercial
11. Turang and Disillusion
12. Spit it
    Out/Jet
13. Tragic Comedy/Scrubs
14. DAE/TV Theme
15. New Song
16. Tupelo
17. Numbah Sixteen

What? Several Bands at Ball Hall, Chicago, IL

What is Ball Hall?

Ball Hall is a DIY venue in a west side loft. People live there.

When did this
happen?

November 14, 2010 around 9 or 10ish

I was sitting at home on a Sunday evening when I received a text message from my girlfriend (she’s from two towns over, you probably don’t know her) asking if I’d like to go with her to see 4 unknown bands play at Ball Hall because she would, “Feel more up to going if I knew I could make snarky comments to someone,” (This is a service I often provide). I had a surprisingly responsible weekend, my homework was already finished, and I’m almost always game for DIY shows so I accepted. A couple hours worth of expository action later I was sitting on a staircase in the back of a lofty sort of room. I’m getting tired of the mainstreamed use of the word hipster to describe fashionably, “alternative,” young adults so
let’s just say there were a shit ton of vintage bicycles involved. Do you know what is always disappointing about DIY venues? No one is obnoxious about it. I’ve always dreamt of walking into such a venue and having a surly looking fellow walk up to me, spit on my shoe, mutter, “DIY or Die,” and walk away. It never happens! That would be so much more interesting than youths standing around drinking beer without adequate seating and a less than stellar PA. Setting up your own (possibly less than legal) venue and getting more than 7 people to come is an impressive feat. Be a little smug about it! We saw two bands and then got hungry. Unmanned Ship is called Unmanned Ship but they might be better titled as Deer Ship. Why? Because then their name would fall really well into the continuum of Deer bands that their sound largely fits within. Is that a really obscure thing to say? Yes. Start over. Unmanned Ship might do well to change their name to Deer Ship because their sound
incorporates many elements of the aggressive yet melodic noise of Deerhunter’s first album as well as the mathy schizophrenia of Deerhoof. Per the shoegazing maxim, they filled up every nook and cranny with pedal assisted lushness. I’m very enthusiastic about circular feedback that knocks things over. So that was cool. What was even cooler (and largely unexpected) was that way that Unmanned Ship would intermingle those element
with passages of straight up Doom Metal. Now, I like cerebral music as much as any bespectacled fellow one might find at a Logan Square loft gig but sometimes I just want Big Kick-ass Riffs that make me wish my hair was still long. Good job, Unmanned Ship

Vehicle Blues like treble, and they like reverb, and they like digital mud. On record they do the noisy Vivian Girls, Beach House, Beach Fossils, lo-fi, 60s pop thing fairly well. It’s a respectable effort. Live, they run into some issues. Mainly the issue of consistent tempos and the maintaining of them. I’m sympathetic. It was a reflective room, and the guitarists tones were purposely indecipherable, both of which can make finding the one somewhat difficult. What’s really problematic is when one gets a little lost between the 1 and 4. It would be rude to suggest that one or both members spend some time with a metronome, but it wouldn’t hurt. It was honestly problematic enough that I considered walking up to them between songs and saying, “Hey, would you like some help? I know the twist beat so I could totally figure out your songs on the fly” (note: this would have been a total dick move). That I have my own meter related issues should speak to the extent of the problem. In conclusion: Vehicle Blues should practice more often.

And Finally I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but aren’t these the same song?

Just imagine Akon in baggy shorts.

Sock Monkey Sound

By Alex Danger Stewart

Architecture N Shit

I go to school in Chicago’s South Loop.  Some people know this and others don’t.  Now more people do.  For much of last year I also lived in the Loop thanks to the illustrious wonders of over-privileged student housing.  This had its advantages and disadvantages, as one might expect.  Being 20 steps away from every train line in the city certainly fell into the former.  Everything (but overpriced bars) closing at 8pm was a drawback. Developing the mistaken belief that it is acceptable to pepper conversation with stories about awesome architecture was another.  What I’m trying to say is that I like to complain about non-issues.

Get to the point.

Now that I’ve moved to the more urban and less urbane Uptown neighborhood (where the only thing more diverse than the people are the smells) I sometimes get little itches of nostalgia for something that I quite clearly don’t need to repeat.  Instead of forgetting that it’s pretty awesome to have room for all of my books and not being met with judgmental eyes when I come home at 3am looking like I’ve been shot out of a circus cannon, I like to take little vacations between classes.  I like to step out of the Wong Art Center on South Wabash and head west over to the Financial District (aka the bank robbery at the beginning of The Dark Knight) with my headphones plugged in; wrapping 70s Soul around my ear drums.

What is your damn point?

Here’s the thesis: Al Green is perfect for this type of outing.

Money

Walking north among the suits and gazing slightly upward towards the great marble and granite facades; swallowed by the vista of deep chrome canyons; humming the horn changes; Al cooing to some unnamed love as the bass and drums practically force the skyscrapers to pulsate to the beat.  It all just feels so fucking cinematic.  One can’t help but imagine they’re part of some vast montage of metropolitan splendor.  It allows me to imagine the thing that every member of my generation secretly (or not so secretly) wishes for: That my life has momentarily become the opening sequence of a television show about my life; That my utter lack of achievement in life has been validated because I’m being followed by a Steadicam operator as I stroll through the morass of people.

As the title credits roll, Al implores his woman, telling her she’s got the love he needs.   Producers’ names flash by as a crane shot from the roof of a lower building zooms out to reveal my place among the noise and bustle.  I stop to tie my shoe in front of the Rookery and the handheld tilts languidly back, basking in the work of Chicago School era Burnham and Root for no reason.

Not a good party topic

Al promises that he’ll never let her go cause he don’t know why love should ever end and the screen fades to black.  A wry voice-over about comic books or romantic mishaps opens the episode.  Or I go back to class to learn about semiotics or cultural appropriation.  It’s one of those.
Hey, we’re all entitled to our dreams.

Sock Monkey Sound

{It’s Kind of a Funny Story}
By Alex Danger Stewart

Note: I have to admit off the bat that I have not seen this film and all of my judgements have been made from the theatrical trailer, television spots, and some knowledge of the novel it was based on.  There’s a very likely chance that I’m completely wrong in my assessment and predictions.

It’s Kind of a Funny Story, a new film from Focus Features (the studio/distribution house which brought us all of the pandering, “quirky,” shallow, indie features that you probably hated in the last couple of years but I probably secretly enjoyed), opened on October 8th.  In it Craig, a sensitive 16 year old boy from Brooklyn, checks himself into the psychiatric wards of a hospital during a depressive bout triggered by the stresses of his school life.  Once there he meets some crazy fellow who likes to wear sweaters and pretend to be sane, as played by Zach Galifianakis, who acts as the protagonist’s (and by proxy the audience’s) Jiminy Cricket or Artful Dodger.  Not exactly a new idea but we’ll let it slide on the basis of the main character’s youth being less redundant.  Through Galifianakis, Craig meets the usual array of post One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest mental hospital patients.  It’s all fairly intimidating/hilarious until Craig encounters Emma Roberts (of Nickelodeon, Nancy Drew, and Aunt Julia Roberts fame) another 16 year old patient in the ward.  She’s super cute and seems interesting and free spirited dangerous and deep and likes Broken Social Scene and fulfills all of the requirements of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.  Except this MPDG also resides in a psychiatric ward which means her one scene of dramatic characterization when she drops her tough and/or eternally optimistic facade and has a little depressive breakdown where the protagonist finds her crying next to a window and she opens up and tells him about the time she took too many pills, or how her parents don’t really love her (see Kristen Stewart in ‘Adventureland‘ or whatever the fuck was wrong with Natalie Portman in ‘Garden State’) and then the protagonist accepts her sadness to show how sensitive he is will have some actual gravity to it because THIS GIRL IS MENTALLY ILL.

Back on track: Craig meets Emma Roberts’s Manic-Depressive Pixie Dream Girl, and becomes smitten.  They share secrets, start this cute little psych ward romance where she becomes his first girlfriend, and the whole thing will ultimately help him grow up and confront his school anxieties or his bullying step-father or whatever is wrong.

That’s all well and good except for the part where his first girlfriend is a 16 year old girl who lives in a psych ward because she is either seriously mentally ill or has had some serious trauma in her youth that has sent her life and mental well being spiraling out of control.

Fun, right?

Let’s examine a few things.  Watch the trailer:

Our first glimpse of Roberts is at about 1:14 into the clip when she is shown looking surly and wearing a homemade t-shirt emblazoned with ,”I HATE Boys.” This in and of itself is not incredibly significant.  There are a number of similar shirts aimed at tween and early teen girls and they’re harmless.  They play into the phase that every child goes through in mid to late grade school when they self segregate between the sexes in a pretty intense manner.  What is significant is the girl’s age and current status as a RESIDENT OF A PSYCH WARD.  Maybe I’m reading too much into this but it seems to me that a 16 year old girl wearing a shirt espousing an immature for her age attitude while receiving psychiatric care should set off warning bells in people’s heads.   The more I started to think about it, the more a thought became clear in my mind.

“Was this girl raped?”

Disclaimer: I realize that rape and sexual assault are incredibly serious and nothing I write here is intended to make light of it or anyone who has experienced or had some connection to it.

Think about it.

This is a 16 year old girl who receives intense psychiatric treatment for some (as yet) unknown trauma.  She regards the people surrounding her with an intensely standoffish attitude.  She rejects an entire sex through her fashion (and because of that fashion, through a part of her identity). Not 12 seconds later, she asks Craig if he thinks she is gross looking.  She then accuses him of being a virgin in a condescending manner.  She probably cuts herself.

Rejection of emotional intimacy; attempting to position herself as being undesirable in appearance (this is actually a very common thing in a lot of youths who have been abused.  It’s vaguely a defense mechanism connected to the idea that their abuser had found them desirable);  early assertion of sexuality; physically destructive behavior.

Holy shit, you guys!

This character was raped!  That’s not okay.  Why on earth would a film advocate its protagonist to pursue her for romantic entanglement?  Based on all appearances, they’ve made a light-hearted quirk fest about a young sensitive indie boy trying to shack up with a girl who is probably being treated for PTSD after having been sexually assaulted.

I’ve looked into the plot of the book. She becomes his first girlfriend.  His FIRST girlfriend.  They’re going to make out and then start sharing secrets and he’ll tell her how he works out some of his anxiety through drawing cartoons and she’ll tell him, “Um well I’m here because my piano teacher was this really, really cute fellow who was sensitive and really good at listening.  He worked his way into my life and became a totally trusted confidant until one afternoon when he forced himself on me and completely obliterated entire areas of my psyche.  So, um yeah.  That happened and now I spend my days having group therapy in my pajamas and it’s really confusing. and now we’re dating because it’s convenient to your character.”

Am I overreacting? After all, many, many, many people (women and men) have and will recover from such horrendous trauma and go on to be entirely happy, healthy, fully formed members of society.

Except she has clearly not recovered from the trauma because she’s getting in-patient treatment in a fucking psychiatric hospital!  Neither of these kids should be dating anyone. That’s a good rule.  If one is suffering from depression, anxiety, PTSD, bipolar disorder, or any other issue to the extent that they have been placed psychiatric treatment and can’t leave, they shouldn’t be dating.

He’s not emotionally or cognitively prepared for such a thing because he’s never had a girlfriend before.  She’s going to tell him what happened and he’s going to flee because 16 year old boys are cowards.  Maybe he’ll stick around until she lets him take her shirt off and then get bored and start to distance himself because 16 year old boys are (by nature) capricious little cocks.  Best case scenario: he’s fairly supportive and caring until he just says something obscenely brutal and unthoughtful because 16 year old boys are bastards who don’t have fully formed brains.  Then she overreacts because 16 year old girls aren’t entirely emotionally or mentally developed either and it completely shatters her precarious sense of healthy relational dynamics because she’s dealing with all of the mental shit that got her put in the hospital in the first place.

Did I mention that he’s only going to be there for a week?

Jesus Christ, Hollywood. This is not okay.  I’m serious.

You’re on my list.

Danger  |  SMS

Sock Monkey Sound

Sometimes an artist’s songs are powerful because they seem irrevocably personal.  Other times it is because they seem to have some extra insight into the human condition; their words find places in people’s hearts that no one would guess others possess.

The former often end up dead.  At his best, Craig Finn is one of the latter.

Lord, I’m Discouraged by The Hold Steady

We’ve all gone through a period in our life where we fell for bad girls.  Sometimes this period lasts for years.  Sometimes it just takes that one.

You know what I’m talking about.  The girl who did more drugs than you were comfortable thinking about.  The girl from an intensely broken home. The girl who should have been in therapy years ago but instead did lots of shady things with shady people.  The one who was tragically attractive in ways you would never fully comprehend.

Craig Finn understands.

Craig Finn preaches

“Lord, I’m discouraged,” he sings, “The circles have sucked in her eyes.  Lord, I’m discouraged.  Her new friends have shadowed her life”

Finn lays out a story of that girl.  The one his protagonist probably knew from high school.  The one who slipped him a Black Sabbath or Replacements tape in morning mass, or got him to skip out of study hall to smoke.  He’s still a (mostly) good Catholic boy; singing an unanswered prayer cause he got in too deep once she started shooting up on the bad side of town.

“And I tried to light candles but they burn down to nothing.  She keeps coming up with excuses and half-truths and fortified wine… There’s a house on the south side/She stays in for days at a time.”

Maybe you were different.  Maybe you were one of the (un)lucky boys who bypassed your bookish nature and actually hooked up with her a few times before you finally stopped because you couldn’t handle the worry.

Most likely you weren’t. You followed her around, sometimes being a friend, mostly just longing.  You drove around at night and felt bad about yourself; coming back home when the tape or your gas tank ran low.  You realized that you were far too immature to deal with such a situation in any appropriate manner.

“I know I’m no angel, I ain’t been bad that way.  Can’t you hear her?  She’s that sweet missing songbird when the choir sings on Sundays, and I’m almost busted.”

It’s the nice guy syndrome on Hulk juice™.  Normally when you would take a liking to a girl who was so intimidatingly awesome and attractive that being in the same room would make you nervous from the top of your skull through to the tips of your fingers, you’d just feel confused.  Completely uniformed, you’d act friendly and amiable, and do anything she asked because half a smile made your knee caps explode.  You’d still hang around assuming that being nice and making awesome mixtapes was enough.  “Law of averages,” you had reasoned, “Eventually she’ll notice.” That you could handle.  You didn’t know how to solve it but you could survive it.

This girl caused all of those feelings plus ten because a weekend out brought real, existential crisis.  You’d think, “What if she falls asleep on her back and doesn’t wake up?  That’s totally a thing that could happen.”

Finn’s lady didn’t make it any easier, “And then there’s just nothing and she keeps insisting the sutures and bruises are none of my business.  She says that she’s sick, but she won’t get specific.”

More driving, more lost sleep, probably more frantic masturbation because you were young and that was happening anyway.

You asked yourself, “Why am I putting myself through this?” and counter with an answer about friends helping each other.  Support systems and such.  Eventually that answer wasn’t enough. You’d ask the question again after a depressing phone call about a run in with the cops and the answer would come back, “I don’t know.”  At some point caring was too problematic.  You began to distance yourself, hoping that she’d find her way out okay.  Not praying anymore, just hoping.

“I know it’s unlikely she’ll ever be mine.  So I mostly just pray she don’t die”

Then the guitar solo kicks in and brings catharsis.
The solo always brings catharsis.

Sock Monkey Sound

Who: Crankupmadonna

What: Their new album, “Hit the Sound”

Did you forget some spaces up there? No. That’s how the name is written.

Shawn Ross Rockin’

As detailed by my friends David and Andrew in their own review of this album, the members of Rockford’s Crankupmadonna have had a long and (partly) storied career making music in and around the area. All pedigrees considered, last year’s eponymous debut couldn’t help but feel less like an album as much as a time capsule. It’s not an unexpected occurrence. Singer/guitarist Shawn Ross had a decade’s worth of songs and the moxie to finally put down his bass and start wailing. The early shows went great (my assessment). The band needed merch so they decided to book studio time and record everything they had. Though I wasn’t there I imagine the thought process went something like, “We’ve got these songs, we’re a decidedly awesome live band, let’s record it live. We’ll do it live!” As a result, Crankupmadonna suffered from being too long (4 songs, by my estimation) and somewhat lacking in both production quality and variety of sound.

When I first popped Hit the Sound into my stereo, I honestly thought they had stepped too far in the opposite direction. That this album has an entirely more produced sound is unmistakable. That it is well produced is even less so (Mike Hagler made sure of that). I couldn’t place the cause of my uneasy feelings. I had first heard all of the songs in their live incarnation and something about the sound was missing Crankupmadonna’s jittery, propulsive muscle. I started the album over after 5 tracks, trying to dig deeper. Then it hit me.

“Everything that night was criminal. Everything that night was dressed in black. Criminal!”

At the first chorus I couldn’t place that nasal yelp of, “Criminal.” The 2^nd chorus slammed me in the head.

Declan mother effing MacManus!

The chorus to, “Mouthful of Booze,” becomes key. The realization becomes impossible to miss. This isn’t an indie rock album like those Superchunk and Dinosaur Jr. releases of Ross’s youth. It’s an Elvis Costello record (a look at Ross’s right arm makes one feel silly for not figuring it out sooner). Suddenly in Attractions territory, it all makes sense. The added organ and noisenik flavors; the wonderfully sneering backup vocals from Gina Knapik; the transparently simple hooks; they all add up to a glorious, fun, snotty power pop record. The songs blow through one’s brain so quickly that you find yourself having unconsciously memorized the lyrics. One moment you’re sitting in your car, concentrated on driving, and then next you notice that you’ve been singing along for the past three songs.

Chris + Jesse = Phat bass grooves

“When we drink/we are the same.”

“Tell me one good lieee/Tell me Tell me.”

These refrains latch themselves into your thoughts. You wake up singing, “When they hit the sound/When they hit the sound/Whose gonna care?” and then realize you had only started listening to the song last week. Do not mistake my use of the 2^nd person pronoun as an indication of this review’s prescriptive nature. I am not saying such things should happen. They just will.

Phil = Hot Licks!

In the end, Crankupmadonna have created an album with innumerable pop pleasure. They’ve now got a fist-raising, sing along album to stand next to their fist-raising, sing along shows. If I made the initial mistake of expecting the two to be analogous, I take it back. It’s an achievement to stand on its own.

Final Verdict: Bonkers; Wowsers; Shit-yeah; exclamatory reaction. Buy this album.

For more info: visit crankupmadonna.com

Sock Monkey Sound

The Clams are a rock and roll group from Chicago.  Their tones are fat and their vibrations rattle one’s bowels.  They are also a group of clean cut, well spoken young men.  I recently sat down and interviewed them via my laptop computer (I’m not too great with the talking to people thing) as we talked shop, grocery, and cleared up all of those false definitions of Mindbanging (In retrospect I suppose my assumption that it was like fingerbanging except with telekinetic powers was probably a bit far fetched).  Afterward they gave Sock Monkey Sound an exclusive first listen to two demos of songs from their upcoming album.

The Clams used to have 3 members and now they have 4. When and how was this addition made? Why is also probably a pertinent question.

Brett: This actually isn’t the first time we’ve had 4 in the band.  When we first started jamming our friend Jim Cooper played guitar and sang with us, but left before we played our first show.  Then Joe Pruitt (Son of Rams) joined in on organ and guitar and stuck around for the first few shows.  The recent addition of Nigel came about for two reasons: 1) Neither Peter or myself wanted to play bass anymore, and 2) I caught a virus that paralyzed my left vocal cord and couldn’t sing for a long time, and wasn’t sure if I’d even be able to again.  Two part harmonies are a crucial part of the Clams sound.

The Clams jam

Pete:Harmonies are definitely essential and adding a full-time bassist seemed to be a necessary addition.  More generally speaking, we’ve always approached things with an open mind.  Adrian, Brett, and I are the original lineup of the formal band and serve as the core.  Some members have come and gone, the sounds have changed, perspective changes.  I wouldn’t be surprised if The Clams added members if we looked to take things in a different direction in the future.

Nigel: I’ve known the Clams and been a fan for years.  The guys in Abbott Smile really look up to the Clams as like cool older brother types, so I felt honored when I got the call up.  Basically Peter just asked me to play a show with them and I said yes.  At one of our rehearsals they showed up with a new bass cab for my amp and that pretty much solidified me as a member, although I’m still expecting some sort of hazing or initiation rite. Word to the wise, if you want someone to join your band, invite them to a rehearsal and give them new gear.

Adrian: After we became a three-piece things really gelled, and for whatever reason we attributed this to not having a dedicated bass player. For a while there we got kind of metaphysical and began questioning even the basic need for basses. We would always be recommending that other bands get rid of their bass players… probably pissed-off a lot of people. We were so young, so foolish. Having Nigel in the band is awesome.

Various members of The Clams have been seen using the Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi fuzz pedal; always the black box. Why use the Russian model instead of the American?

Brett: Yeah, Peter and I always used the Russian Big Muffs along with Pro Co Rats.  They’re a little smoother sounding and have better bass response than the American version.  I’ve actually started using an American version just to switch things up I guess.  It’s more of a proper fuzz pedal – nice and gnarly sounding.  Nigel is currently using my Russian Muff with his bass.

Pete: Russians are cheaper.

Adrian: Peter’s just into all things Russian.

Members of The Clams have a reputation for being foodies. What do you think is the importance of eating good food? What’s your favorite restaurant as of today?

Brett: You gotta feed the body and the soul.  Only good food can do both.  We also get together with friends and cook fairly often.  It’s just a nice thing to do communally.

Pete: We get really hungry sometimes.

Nigel:  I’m embarrassingly not much of a foodie, although I’ve been perfecting the fine art of making risotto.

Adrian: It’s all about the process, and the communal aspect of cooking and hanging out with friends. Well, mostly – the actual eating is great, too. The Clams do have a long history of elaborate cooking running alongside band activities. Once, while recording, we had a pot of poultry stock simmering for most of a day, then took a break from recording to make duck a l’orange for dinner. We’re nerds.

Brett: The Publican

Adrian: Lula Cafe

Pete: Beef-a-roo

Nigel: Steak and Egger

The Clams are loud, and the Clams are heavy. What are some other adjectives that could be used to describe The Clams?

Brett: Punctual.

Adrian: Flexible.

Peter: Non-portable.

By my count, the Clams have self released two EPs. When can we expect new music?

Brett: The plan was to release a split 7” with Chicago band Woo-Man and the Banana, but they broke up unexpectedly which is a huge bummer.  We did record the songs that were supposed to be for that release, so it’s just a matter of what to do with them at this point.  Also, we have a new record planned out that we hope to record in the fall.  It’s kind of a psychedelic western epic.

Adrian: In addition to the new stuff Brett mentioned, we also have a growing handful of tunes that are often heard at our live sets, but have never been recorded. In particular, there’s one about our friend and one-time member Jim that needs to be recorded. It’s about how the ladies really dug this beard he had once.

What can one expect from a typical Clams set?

Peter: Fog.

Brett: Nausea.

Adrian: Equipment failure.

Nigel: Sweat and blood.

Tell us about your writing process.

Brett: Usually Peter or I come up with a chord progression or a riff and we try it out at practice with everyone else and let things take shape.  Vocal melody and lyrics typically come later.  Lately, I’ve also been getting into the habit of demoing songs and ideas for songs just to have a reference on hand when thinking about things I’d like to change.

Pete: Idea demos have been working well of late.  Music always comes first, the lyrics sort themselves out. Usually themes are driven by the band’s collective current interests in other media: books, movies, music, wikipedia, etc.

Adrian: Lately, some songs have grown organically out of group practices. Though unfortunately we’ve had a few songs that have arisen like this, but can’t seem to be remembered/recreated by the next practice. Also, in terms of lyrics: the recent process has been pretty group-oriented. Sort of a “hang out together, pass the notebook around, everyone contributes a verse” sort of thing.

What exactly is Mindbanging?

Brett: It’s a term that Peter coined to mean head banging in your mind.  We were in the car one time and some raucous song (I don’t remember what specifically) came on and exclaimed that it was mind banging.

Pete: Yeah, some sort of cerebral freak-out.  I think a motorcycle may have been involved?  One that was in time with the song, maybe?  We also think the ambiguity is funny.

Adrian: Couldn’t be more literal – it’s headbanging for your mind. Though several people have mistakenly assumed there’s a sexual meaning there…

What do you think of Gastr Del Sol?

Adrian: Their cover of “Close to You” is mindbanging. Did they cover that?

That was Jim O’Rourke on his own but it’s ridiculously mindbanging.

Pete: Eureka was on repeat for several months back when Brett and I lived together in the pre-Clam era.  The poster included in the LP version is referenced lyrically in the first official Clams song, “Two and Two Makes Three.”

Nigel: Not the biggest fan although I love some of Jim O’Rourke’s solo stuff, especially Eureka and Insignificance–also some of the Loose Fur stuff.  Also, Jim is one of my favorite modern producers/recordists.

It seems like the members of The Clams probably spent a lot of time playing guitar in their bedrooms in high school. Is that a fair assessment?

Brett: Definitely.  I kind of honed my skills playing along to Led Zeppelin records and other things of that nature.  But I think Peter was too busy singing with the Moses Hogan Gospel Choir and taking solos at Carnegie Hall.

Pete: Practice, practice, practice…

Nigel: Totally, although I spent just as much time playing in a band or playing in the basement with my brother on drums.  I come from a musical family so it wasn’t considered weird or antisocial to spend a perfect summer day in the basement with a four track and my guitar.  I love being in bands more than playing alone or making home recordings though, even though bands can be time-consuming or stressful.  I get nervous and depressed when I don’t play music with other people for too long.

Adrian: Nigel! I did the basement thing too, and the brother on drums.

The Clams’ Myspace.com page mentions an affinity for Fender Bassman amplifiers and I’m pretty sure you frequently use them on stage. What is the root of this choice? Additionally, how do you have so much awesome gear?

Brett: I used to be in a band called the Sleeptights and when we went from a 4 piece to a 3 piece I took over on bass. I wanted a bass amp with a little bit of grit that I could also use for guitar so the Bassman 100 seemed like a good choice. They’re also really affordable, especially the silverface models.  Joe Pruitt who played guitar in the Sleeptights had a 1966 Bassman head which he later sold to Peter. Nigel just happened to also have a Bassman 70. They’re great amps. They have a big, deep, growly sound that works nicely for the Clams. As far as our awesome gear, I guess for me personally, I’ve been playing guitar since I was 11 and have just accumulated some sweet stuff over the years.

Pete: I definitely kinda fell into mine when Joe started selling his stuff before moving. I’ve always thought they’re pretty affordable as far as radass vintage gear goes. And, we’re rich assholes.

Who is your favorite drummer ever? I’m expecting answers from all members of The Clams.

Brett: It’s got to be John Bonham. Who else?  I think Jim DeRogotis once likened his playing to “a ballet dancer with cinderblocks for shoes.” That rules.

Pete: Keith Moon.

Adrian: Maybe Om-era Chris Hakius… but John Bonham wins out in the long run. And possibly, Gene Hoglan as a wildcard.

Nigel: Either Mitch Mitchell or Greg Saunier, who I think is the mystical love child of Mitch Mitchell and Keith Moon.

What are your plans for the near future? The further future?

Brett: We want to record this new record, and plan a tour shortly after it’s release.  Other than that, I just want to keep writing new songs and playing shows around town.

Adrian: What Brett said, but we’re also planning more hot tub parties at his parents’ house. And I’m buying a gong ASAP.

Pete: Record the latest stuff and do a little touring. Keep on writing and playing.  Other than that, opening for Boris at Kitchen Stadium.

The Clams: Empress Tree/Age of the Gun

The Clams: Get the Rope

You can find more info and songs and whatever else you might want at www.myspace.com/theclamsjam or www.facebook.com/pages/The-Clams/308586241686

Download both EPs by The Clams for free at http://theclams.bandcamp.com/

Sock Monkey Sound

So I was reading this Cracked article (because: shut up. that’s why) and it helped me realize two things.

1. That Ke$ha lady does have actual lyrics

2. She is completely lacking even a glimmer of an understanding of how similes work.

Take the line that everyone knows, “Wake up in the mornin feelin like P Diddy“

Tell us what you REALLY think.

What the hell does that mean?  What feeling is P Diddy indicative of?  He’s a complicated dude.  I imagine he wakes up feeling ambitious.  Maybe she has woken up feeling like a man with 7 or 8 children. Possibly feeling like someone who has had multiple friends/associates murdered in hip hop feuds.   Is she just trying to say that she’s woken up feeling like a person who is so rich that they have their own vodka brand?  Then why not follow that line of reasoning through the end of the song? That would make an awesome song. Plus Diddy barely records anymore so he probably hasn’t worn out references to the awesomeness of his own life.

Still, what’s another word used to describe a rapper who is rich and glamorous that everyone already knows the meaning of?  A pimp!

“Wake up in the morning feeling like a pimp.”

I just made the object of the sentence make more sense without changing the flow. We can even change the 2nd line from, “”Got my glasses, I’m out the door gonna hit this city.” to something that still rhymes with the end of the first (because Diddy and city totally rhyme).  “Wake up in the morning feeling like a pimp.  Tripping over last night, stumbling like a gimp.”  The whole song is about getting super drunk.  As an alcoholic, Ke$ha would clearly be a bit hung over until she brushed her teeth with Jack and started feeling normal again.  Did the author of Tik Tok write a 2nd draft?

Let’s say they intentionally sat down and thought, “I’d like to make a reference to an actual person in the first line.”  If one is going to do that, one would have to expand on the thought and show WHY the speaker is feeling like that person.

For example: “Wake up in the morning feeling like Wilt Chamberlain.  Good at basketball, and fucking, and being really tall, man.”

See. I made a reference to a famous person and then illustrated why one might be feeling like that person using three well-known facts about him.  Wilt Chamberlain is famous for being one of the most dominant players in NBA history; having allegedly slept with over 20,000 women in his lifetime, and standing 7’1″ tall. That’s how it works!

I ought to be getting paid for this stuff.

Sock Monkey Sound

Joey De Verve

Joie De Vivre – You Ruined Everything that was Ever Good

With You Ruined Everything that was Ever Good, the titular track of their 2010 tour EP, Joie De Vivre brought something so far unseen to the table: Swagger.

Prior to this song, the band’s lyrical aesthetic could best be described as, “Earnest Apathy“.  That is to say any number of songs in their catalog can be summed up by a scruffy young man yelping, “I feel bad about these things, but I don’t know how to change them.”  One could easily imagine a girl breaking up with JDV’s lyrical persona.  Upon hearing the news, the persona slumps down in his chair and says, “Oh ok.” Then the persona drives home and feels bad about himself until his friends come over with a 24 pack of beer and some old Alkaline Trio albums (incidentally it would look like this).

That’s what makes this song so different.  Maybe it’s because of the hilarious origins (see their recent appearance on our podcast), but You Ruined Everything that was Ever Good has none of that reluctance or longing usually present in a Joie De Vivre track.  Lunging forward at a pace that veers shockingly close to up tempo, the guitars bite instead of chime.  One can actually move their hips to this thing.  Singer  Brandon Lutmer’s usually propensity for stretching words out to bar length is replaced by what amounts to urgency; gnawing at the bit to get all of his words out (relatively speaking).

“Staying out all night/ to follow you home convinced me that I was right/ in letting you go.  I couldn’t wait to tell you/that things are fine,” he sings to an unnamed party.  Basically telling her, “It’s cool. I’m better now anyway.”  Then the barbs get more venomous, plainly stating, “You weren’t missed by anyone,” repeating it before ending the song with the chanted, “You ruined/everything that was ever good.  You ruined/everything that was ever good.”  Ouch.  As far as emo bands go, it’s basically a Ludacris song.  Everything is delivered with confidence and a smirk.  It almost makes you want to strut.

I’m sure that we’ll all go back to Charlie Brown moments soon enough, but it’s nice to have a rallying cry for moving on.  Give it six months. This song will be a sing along song.

Visit Joie De Vivre’s myspace page to hear the song: http://www.myspace.com/joiedevivreband

Sock Monkey Sound

Cub reporter Danger Stewart is on the scene at the 2010 Pitchfork Festival with updates all weekend long via the Sock Monkey Sound hotline. Check back here all weekend for new audio updates and live tweets. Pitchfork coverage sponsored in part by Hobnob Wines. Try their Pinot Noir, it’s really damn good.

Sock Monkey Sound

What? Deep Blue Organ Trio at the Green Mill

Where?  The Green Mill, Uptown, Chicago

Why? Because I adore historic institutions and I live down the street

What is the thesis? A criticism of jazz ignorance by someone with a marginally less shallow understanding

Last Tuesday night I found myself at the historic Green Mill jazz club.  I’d been avoiding it for a little while because it’s almost prohibitively expensive (for me, at least.  I’m sure people with jobs have less of an issue with $6 cocktails and a $12 cover on weekends), but I had no plans and was in a musical mood.  The Mill relies heavily on its history and gets away with a lot of shit because of it (on any given night, it can be difficult to tell how many people are there for the music and how many came because of its reputation as Al Capone’s frequent hangout).  From my perspective, this is mostly forgiven by the Mill’s track record of booking live music almost every night of the week for almost 90 years now.  Even as the Uptown neighborhood saw some really, really rough years in the 60s, 70s, and 80s (aw, who are we kidding? The 90s too) the Mill kept booking music and also managed to become instrumental in the formation of the Chicago slam poetry scene (the Sunday night Uptown Poetry Slam has been running for a good 24 years now).

Green Mill Lounge

So that’s why I was there.  We walked in and found a scene that meshed fairly well with my expectations.  Dark, resplendently restored Prohibition era décor, and packed with white folks; the band churning away at small Swing combo and Bop era standards.  This is where I start trying to position my experience as being indicative of a larger issue with jazz:  We’re now coming up on a time when jazz has ceased to be a major market influence for almost as long as it was one.  Jazz has not moved units in any large amounts in America since the early 60s and it was supplanted by Blues and R&B as a reflection of Black culture and partying tendencies a further 10 to 15 years before that.  Even within the well established idiom of white people being the only ones to listen to jazz (or at least pretend to, as the long running joke contends) the perception has stagnated.  Asked to describe it, a random person will most likely come up with something that amounts to what was played by Dizzy Parker and their ilk.  A smoky Harlem club; clean cut men in suits wailing lightning fast notes on a Saxophone/Trumpet over a quick drum shuffle (boom chicka boom, etc), and an upright bass walking out the chords-I’d attribute this perception to the appearance of 40s/50s era icons like Buddy Rich and Dizzy Gillespie on the Muppets Show, and the Peanuts soundtrack but that’s another discussion.

Here’s why that’s a problem: It is certainly a very accurate understanding of a specific kind of jazz, but it has also not been relevant since 1954 (I obviously place myself at a higher level.  Being a fan of late era Coltrane and the free jazz of Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman and all.  You should roll your eyes).  As much as jazz is, and always was, about virtuosity, improvising, and swinging, it’s even more about pushing the boundaries of playing and composition. Literally since Morton and Armstrong began incorporating solos into the typical call and response of New Orleans jazz almost a hundred years ago, there has been a steady push against those walls formed by The Rules. So it’s fine if the style that has been found to be the most palatable combination of appealing to yet challenging a listener’s ears is Bebop- I always equate Bop era jazz with the art of Picasso.  It contains abstraction and is clearly modern & Modern, but has enough adherences to common form that it doesn’t cause viewers to push their perceptions of what constitutes art too far.  The only problem with this perception is that jazz didn’t stop.  It kept moving outward.  Freed from the confines of commercial appeal, it didn’t stop reaching.  Hell, my understanding of the avant garde really only extends to about 1970.  According to much more knowledgeable people than me, contemporary jazz has done things within both the dissonant, free styles and more melodic ideas that would seem as foreign to the players of 1968 as the outré drumming of Elvin Jones on, “Ascension,” and, “A Love Supreme,” would to those of 1950.  That’s the problem.  When I walk into a club in 2010 and see/hear people playing music that was growing stale 50 years ago, my heart loves it.  It’s just that, my brain can’t help but want more.

Deep Blue Organ Trio

Once again (I’ve been saying this a lot lately) that does not mean that The Deep Blue Organ Trio are not greatly skilled at what they do.  The bandleader/organist Chris Foreman is the kind of comical archetype that one doesn’t really expect to exist in real life.  A blind, older black fellow in Ray Charles shades, Foreman has the kind of commanding virtuosity that makes one stop in their steps and say, “Wait! Is this shit real?” The movement between his right hand and the bass lines of his left hand and feet was astounding and, when it came time to solo, Foreman often lowered the volume on his Hammond B3; almost demanding that the crowd pay closer attention in their listening.  Foreman was apparently not playing with regular partners so I’m not sure of the names of the other two players but they were most solid.  The guitarist’s rhythm was nicely complementary and I appreciated the way he mostly stayed away from Wes Montgomery style octaves.  The drummer, apparently a student of Art Blakey’s pounding, pushed the beat along with swagger, dropping bombs all over the place.  Like I said, my heart and foot loved it.  I just wish they could have done something for my brain.

http://deepblueorgantrio.com
http://greenmilljazz.com

Sock Monkey Sound

Where: 3324 N California, Chicago, IL

If it’s so good, why haven’t you gone back? Because I don’t have a car and it’s a bitch to get to on the CTA.  Also money things.

Isn’t this a bit hyperbolic? Incredibly

Hot Doug’s

Walking up, the people come into sight long before the
sign.  Stretching around the corner and
halfway down the block, they shiver in the frigid February wind.  These people congregate, queuing up hours at a time,  because they must; because they know that what lies inside, what is hinted at by the occasional whiff of a scent escaping out the front door, is worth more than any momentary discomfort.

These people are winners. These towering examples of humanity.                                                                                                    These are the people who build empires. Who,
when presented with something exotic, do not fear change but welcome new tastes
and experiences with alacrity.  These are
the people who, after eating their linguine, you must fight the sudden urge to
marry.  These are your people and you join the throng, passing around a menu, cracking jokes about your vegetarian friends as you inch

closer and

closer

towards Canaan.

Finally you enter, passing through the doors with
anticipation burning a hole in your chest.
It smells like victory in here, the triumphs of all mankind latch on to
the hairs in your nose.  Taking in a deep breath, you feel compelled towards greatness.
You are filled with the urge to invent.

The urge to build; to climb a mountain and run a five-minute
mile.  Through the power of this magnificent, almost erotic scent, your ambition sees no end. Your potential for glory exceeds all means of measurement.

At last the moment comes.

As you approach the counter you are greeted by the inquiring glance of a less charismatic Jon
Favreau.  You spill out your order in rapid succession, so as not to forget a single thing, and are directed towards a table.

To wait.  And Wait.

Then, suddenly, it lies before you.  Duck and foie gras sausage with white truffle
mustard and a liver mousse.

The fear builds in your gut.

Certainly it could not live up to expectations.  Your body of experience steels your psyche against the disappointment inherent to life. You fleetingly ponder fleeing.                                                                                                                                        Perhaps the fantasy will far exceed the reality and you will be left disappointed, a shell of a man.

NO!  No! no no no!

You have come this far and no result will
scar you as much as the constant fear and wondering of the unknown.  You grab uncertainty by the scrotum and proceed as planned.

Upon the first bite your fears are instantly proven incorrect.  You mouth explodes with fire and gore; the
nerve receptors overloaded and spreading a massive electric charge all
throughout your body.

“I am Victorious!” you scream out loud,

“I am a wild beast!  Je suis une fauve!

I am Oppenheimer splitting the atom! I am Sam Phillips founding Sun Records! I am Thor, swinging my mighty hammer and crushing the skull of the giant King!  I AM A Golden God!

Kneel before my magnificence!”

And, shockingly, they do.  The world bends down and cocks an ear towards your voice.  At last, the world is silent, awaiting your command.

But it does not come.
Working your way toward the opposite end of the bun, the only sound
escaping your duck smeared lips is the quiet intake of breath as you revel in
the savory splendor. Global conquest can wait, this ecstasy cannot be
ignored.

Swallowing those last bites,
you lean back and become taken by the intense desire to kill yourself (and three innocent bystanders for good measure).
For nothing else in life could possibly reach the glorious heights of the proceeding minutes.

But, of course, you do not.
If nothing else, the human spirit is one of optimism.  No, you continue your life and as you walk
away, returning to society, you do so with a twinkle in your eye.  All of these people driving down the road and pounding the sidewalks; you laugh at them.
These fools.

You scoff because you know.  You know the secret.

You know what it means to kiss the sun and
touch the obelisk.  You know what it
means to live.

To be.

You know, and you will return.

http://www.hotdougs.com

Sock Monkey Sound

What That Is: It’s a photography show that happened the same weekend as Rockford Art Scene. Didn’t you listen to the Sock Monkey Sound episode 213?

No: You should have. It was pretty good

When: April 16 and 17, 2010

How Much: It was free

Next time: I’ll ask what the O stood for.

If you can think back, way, way back, to last September, you might remember a little review titled, “Chris French Presents: Annie Rudolph, Aryn Kresol, and Carrie Allen.” (Check Out Last Years Event Review!). What was notable about this? Well, either very little or an average amount. It depends on how you look at it. I’m leaning towards the latter because it was my first review for this fine website. It’s mostly pretty ok. It was probably much too short, and I pretended to be somewhat of an authority on photography, which I revealed to be painfully untrue with my reference to Alfred Steiglitz (Christ, don’t you know any contemporary photographers? Yes but there’s no way I’m going to name check Annie Leibovitz. Does Diane Arbus count? Maybe). There was a pretty good joke about Rockford’s own Jesus Correa and his penchant for kitten sweatshirts. And I always like to explore the comedy of cheap wine. As he did in September, Chris French held a photography show in his loft space on State Street (I mistakenly referred to it as an Art Scene participant. Turns out they bypassed the entrance fee and went guerrilla with a sign on the sidewalk to lure people in). It ended up being a very similar experience. I didn’t see any Jesus Correa art this time but I did see him riding his bicycle across the State Street Bridge. I couldn’t tell if his sweatshirt had depictions of any animals on it. I also did something drastically with my reporting. This time, instead of drinking too much wine and just looking at the photographs, I drank too much wine and actually talked to the photographers themselves. It proved to be very illuminating.

“I don’t remember who said this, but they said, ‘Those who put themselves in a position to get lucky usually do.”

This was Matt Schwerin explaining his artistic method in trying to capture everyday moments that might say something larger about the human experience (my words, not his). It’s a very interesting phenomenon. Even though the three photographers were mostly chosen because of their friendship with C French, they end up being illustrative of three equally disparate approaches to the medium.

On the one side, Annie Rudolph represents what may be the most direct approach. Her photography is mainly centered on finding beauty in the world. All of her photographs were taken on the fly, owing their existence to the fact that she was in the specific place at the specific time with her camera at hand. They emphasize a focus on aesthetic qualities rather than those that are symbolic or expository (The word I’m looking for is thematic). I said last year that her photographs “show a command of light and form that belie a mastery of both technology and a strong eye for composition. She also had really cool frames.” I still agree with this assessment. Except there weren’t as many cool frames this time. For more of Rudolph’s work go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/annierudolph or http://annierudolphphotography.com

Sitting on what I see as the opposing end of the philosophical spectrum is the work of Aryn Kresol. Kresol’s photography is, quite often, as informed by literature as it is by pure visuals. She often begins with titles and then strives to take photographs which reflect that symbology. One is not likely to see a genre photograph from Miss Kresol. When I viewed some of her other work in the fall, I probably focused too much on the way in which she uses real world objects (faces, body parts, sometimes furniture) in a more liquid, abstract matter. I don’t want to suggest that her photography is rife with iconography (incidentally, this is a phrase that I often like to blurt out when I’m practicing my Sheffield accent alone in my apartment. I received lots of strange looks when an art history professor actually said it aloud and I burst out laughing). These elements are most definitely present and are quite impressive, but there are many undercurrent themes that one does not become aware of with a cursory glance at the photographs. One finds a lot more meaning when they take time to ponder the relationship between the title and the work itself. To see more of Kresol’s work, visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/enigmaticintent . Or check out her blog at http://arynkresol.blogspot.com

I’m going to suggest that Matt Schwerin’s work sits at an almost halfway point between the approaches of Annie Rudolph and Aryn Kresol (both because I actually believe that it does occupy a space between the direct photographs of Rudolph and the more cerebral approach exhibited in those of Kresol, and also because it works very well organizationally). Schwerin does seem to split the difference between the two. Carrying a camera with him as often as possible, he whips it out when a photographic opportunity presents itself. Later, he moves to give these photographs deeper meaning by placing them in a context that will reveal symbolic themes that may not have been evident in the single photograph. I’m not going to try to explain the true meanings of Schwerin’s group of photos (it was very involved and impressive and I can’t do it full justice. Especially not without showing all of them on this page) but they touched on themes of faith, family, and post adolescences in some very beautiful ways. If you have time next month, I suggest going to see Schwerin’s senior project at the Columbia College graduation show (http://tinyurl.com/y6nz384) and talk to him yourself. That’s true of all three photographers but I don’t have any links to upcoming events for the other two. For more on Matt Schwerin’s work, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattschwerin

Overall, C French and Lonnie Iske over at Vixen Productions put on a pretty darn good event. I do have two complaints. There wasn’t nearly as much wine this time as there was the first and what was there was not of the greatest quality (Although I did have at least two people give me their Chardonnay because it was too gross to drink. Nice). The second being the very rude way in which they ignored my band, Boys Like Jason’s (http://boyslikejason.bandcamp.com) repeated offers to play. This is what I wrote in September:

“To that end, I had a very good time and hope that Chris French and the fine folks at Vixen Productions take part in the Art Scene again next year. One could also hope that they might be swayed to consider a performance art installation. On an unrelated note, my band, Boys Like Jason; are now billing themselves as performance artists.”

7 months ago! We even offered the option of having us play quiet or play loud. Instead they had Warren Franklin and Kevin Schwitters play on Friday and Saturday, respectively. Whatever. Warren sounded like Warren and he had an untitled song that I’m going to call, “This Love Can Hurt” that I particularly enjoyed. Schwitters played two Braves songs, which was awesome, and handled the crowd in a very fun, personable manner.

Final Score: 9 Bottles of Sweet Red/Digital SLRs out of 10

To see work from all of the artists mentioned vist their sites below:

Annie Rudolph
http://www.flickr.com/photos/annierudolph or http://annierudolphphotography.com/

Aryn Kresol
http://www.flickr.com/photos/enigmaticintent or http://arynkresol.blogspot.com/

Matt Schwerin
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattschwerin

Sock Monkey Sound

by Alex Danger Stewart

What: Six Nights Alone EP Review

Where: The band is from Rockford, IL. I’m writing this on a Compaq notebook.

Why? They asked us for coverage and I agreed because I support local music.

Keep Explaining: And that was a really long time ago because I forgot because I’m pretty flaky, then Chip reminded me today and I felt bad so I’m reviewing it now.

I usually have a pretty deliberate process when I review new music. Assuming that it’s a digital release (Vinyl has extra steps) I load it onto my Ipod and listen to it alone in my apartment (usually while eating a sandwich or Annie Chun Noodle Bowl™) not really thinking, just listening. Then I let my reactions percolate for a couple of days before finding a free evening and hoping on the train (usually the Brown Line cause it seems to take longer to get places), headphones in tow, to test out the dichotomy between listening to it in a noisy anonymous environment and also doing so in the near solitude of walking through a residential neighborhood in Lincoln Park or Ravenswood. Then I often come home and write the first couple hundred words of the review before getting distracted and doing other things (usually sleeping). Then, about a week later, I finally force myself to sit down and finish it and I usually play the key songs again while writing about them.

This review is pretty much ignoring those methods.

Why?

Well, for a couple of reasons. First, because the band solicited coverage from Sock Monkey Sound. Don’t get me wrong, I love it when bands give me free music in exchange for press. It’s happened like 3 times so far and it makes me feel like a professional. But I do have some integrity and I’m pretty unlikely to have any built in sentimentality for a band that I’ve never heard of just because they’re local so I’m not as motivated to care about being super thorough, or about holding back some of the harsher criticisms I might think up. Plus I think all of these songs are on the band’s Myspace page (how am I supposed to feel elitist if everyone can hear them for free?). The second reason is that I’m coming into this review with somewhat low expectations.

Why?

There are, once again, a couple of reasons. One of the band members has a somewhat checkered history and I take a little bit of issue with the way they are promoting themselves. Singer/guitarist Aaron Whalen used to be in Killing Abraham (http://www.myspace.com/killingabraham) which was a band for which I held an unbridled hatred. I so vehemently disliked them that (like 4 years after the last time I even had the displeasure of seeing them play) I made an unflattering reference to one of their shitty songs in the Special Thanks section of my band Boys Like Jason’s (insert shameless plug (http://boyslikejason.bandcamp.com/) )self released debut EP last year. That’s quite petty, but I can’t help it. They were that bad. You, the reader, have to ask, “Isn’t that unfair to prejudge a band based on one member’s past creative efforts?” No because he is listing himself as a former member of Killing Abraham on Six Nights Alone’s Myspace page so he’s actively asking us to draw comparisons to those past efforts. That leads to my second cause for some suspicion that this band might suck. Their Myspace page lists their influences as “Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and people who aren’t afraid to do something different.” Waylon, Willy, and Johnny are ALWAYS the influence that bands list when they want to cover up the fact that their main influence is Uncle Tupelo/Son Volt’s first album and that at least 2 members really enjoy the Johnny Cash American releases. Bands who list those influences never ever ever sound anything like Waylon, Willy, or Johnny.

Here’s why this band might not suck, though: I love Uncle Tupelo and SNA has a ton of shows booked over the summer in diverse venues across the Midwest and Eastern part of the country. Plus they have an old guy playing pedal steel. I fucking love pedal steel guitar and old guys are usually really good steel players. So……….After too long of a prologue, I’ve sat down with two beers (beer makes me less discerning) and it’s time to listen to/write about the songs.

This band totally sounds like Uncle Tupelo’s first two releases. I fucking knew it! “Don’t Care,” could easily have been a demo that didn’t make the cut from the No Depression sessions. Whalen’s voice is clearly not as good as Jay Farrar’s but that’s a totally unreasonable thing to criticize. Apart from a very misplaced breakdown at 2:30, I’m totally jamming to this. The pedal steel is good enough to almost carry the end of the song through some rough patches. Good job Mark Oberfoell.

Every Alt Country band has a song about drinking your life away that rings slightly untrue (mostly because Alt Country band members are usually too young to have developed a really strong drinking problem). “Ode to Zeus,” is that song for Six Nights Alone. Pushed along by a nice train beat, this has the makings of a pretty solid song along. I’m noticing a trend though. At about the halfway point of every song, they divert from the loud country style that was totally working and start sticking in pop punk elements. This does not work. I wish they would stop.

“Shout! Wont Take Out Makers,” has my favorite lyric so far. “Well I spent two weeks sober and I didn’t even know her. Help me drown my pain away.” That’s really good. The title is actually pretty clever, referring to the detergent’s inability to wash out stains from my favorite bourbon. This song is working for me.

I don’t have much to say about, “Stealin Your Heart.” This song mostly works except, once again, there’s a damn half time break down 2 ½ minutes into the song. Stop that!

Finally, a song in 12/8. “Sunset Blvd,” brings some much needed head bobbing and a bit of doom. Mark Oberfoell is fucking owning this song with his pedal steel. And there are no break downs! I might listen to this song again just for the hell of it.

Complaints that I have overall: The production feels too contemporary for such a bartastic band. I don’t feel like they’re playing together in a smelly, beer stained room, which is always the aesthetic that you want when a band mixes loud and twang. In a similar vein, the meter is way too straight. I’d like to hear drummer Paul Metz loosen up and let things swing a little. Also I really wanted a guitar solo somewhere in the EP. If they had replaced every breakdown with a twangy solo, I’d be a happy man.

Final Verdict: I don’t know that I enjoyed these songs enough to recommend them outright, but if you walk into a bar and find this band playing, stick around for a little while. There are some definite positive points in every song. The best parts were those that ignored the band’s pop punk instincts. That should be obvious, though.

Check out Six Nights Alone at http://www.myspace.com/6nightsalone

Sock Monkey Sound

What: She and Him Vol. 2

Didn’t that come out in March? Yeah. My brain turned off for a little while.

Where did you buy it? Reckless Records on Madison

Let’s face it; every living person who exists in contemporary society has a crush on Zooey Deschanel. Not even necessarily in a sexual relations way. Most people just want to bake a batch of gluten free cookies and hug her for a few hours.

Literally, everyone. Even my mom (and she doesn’t get crushes on people who aren’t Jeff Bridges). Every time that Cotton™ commercial comes on, or she hears a She & Him song in the car, my mom will comment, “Isn’t she the most adorable thing in the world?” It’s mostly warranted too. Zooey Deschanel is really fucking adorable (feel free to take this moment to curse the existence of Ben Gibbard. I never liked the mealy mouthed, bucket of boring anyway. I once refused to buy a guitar because I saw a picture of him playing one. That’s kind of ridiculous). I don’t even have to give supporting evidence for that claim because you all know it to be true. With that inherent level of adoration, it becomes very easy to suggest that any fawning over her music is based more on looks and personality than actual quality.

Here’s why this is bullshit: 1. I don’t think anyone actually fawns over She and Him. As far as I can tell it’s generally understood that, while She & Him is very enjoyable, Deschanel and Matt Ward are more productive and artistically achieved in their primary jobs as actress and M Ward: solo artist. 2. She is a talented, affable, and engaging singer who writes fun, hooky, and often compelling songs. 3. Whether you want to kiss the singer or not, it is near impossible to not be sucked in by Ward’s production. This man knows how sound works and, after hearing the instrumentation that he wraps the various songs in, one can often be hard pressed to conceive of better, more fitting choices.

Now (300 words in) let’s get to the album itself. Vol. 2 builds on the strengths of its predecessor. The first song, “Thieves,” can easily be placed in a larger role of the song that defines the group’s entire aesthetic. Deschanel continues her songwriting persona as an endearingly cute young thing whose smarts and sense of humor don’t seem to stop her bothersome knack for falling for guys who just don’t seem to love her as much as she does them. “What’s in my pocket?” She sings, “You never knew. You didn’t know me well, so well, as I knew you.” It’s delivered with a wink and a smile. She may be crying today but the Los Angeles sun will be shining tomorrow and she may very well be back in love. Behind her, Ward’s guitar and strings swell melodramatically as we’re pulled into the happiest melancholy available without ordering from some shady Russian drug service.

I know this has been said in almost ever review out there, but the magic of She and Him lies in the way that their music is not a direct callback to past music. It acts as a synthesis of all of their influences (Tin Pan Alley, countrypolitan, ALL of the Beach Boys and Phil Spector knock offs, etc etc) that produces an entirely unique combination of sound that begins to surpass the sum of its parts; almost doing for 60s AM pop what Raiders of the Lost Ark did for 30s adventure serials (ok that’s really hyperbolic. This album isn’t as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark). Though they may sometimes remind you of others, whether during the soft, slow dances of, “Lingering Still,” and, “Me and You,” or the rollicking cover of NRBQ’s “Riding in my Car,” She & Him mostly sound like themselves.

Final Verdict: Give Vol. 2 a spin. You could use some easy fun. The new Frightened Rabbit album tends to bring you down a bit too far.

Sock Monkey Sound

www.GirlsRockChicago.org

So I get a class-wide email last week from one of my professors informing me that Girls Rock! Chicago is looking for interns and instructors to help educate campers about the musical, technical, and creative aspects involved in musicianship. This is tremendously awesome because:

1. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s impressing young kids with my moderately skilled guitar playing and knowing how to match impedance and look badass while using effects pedals.

and

2. I REALLY need a summer job and the Illinois unemployment rate for my age group is 26%

I was all ready to apply and help the next generation of lady bands learn how to rock out with their socks out (I don’t think you’re allowed to swear at kid summer camps and I never wear shoes on stage).

One Problem:
They only want female musicians.

No fucking fair!

(Sidebar: I know the Camp Jam Chicago program is coed but they’re not hiring. And it’s all the way in Lake Forrest. Hence my outrage)

Why I’m pissed:
In not allowing me to apply for a job, Girls Rock! Chicago is only reinforcing existing gender divisions in music and perpetuating stereotypes about Girl Bands instead of the much more appealing and logically cogent understanding of bands being based more in musical and personal chemistry than in worries about gender/some 2nd wave throwback idea of sisterhood.

Do you know the first criticism that is always made against girl bands, often before their music is heard?
“People only like them because they’re attractive and it gives guys boners to see a girl playing guitar (never mind how well she does so).” Do you know who no one says that about? The woman in The Thermals; also that one who plays organ in the Decemberists. People are much less likely to come ogle you at gigs if you’re standing next to a large hairy motherfucker playing bass and threatening to take his shirt off. Yes, it’s fantastic if girls want to start a band with their female friends, but it’s just as fantastic for them to be concerned with making quality music whether it is with other men or women.

Get this out of the way:
Yes, it’s obviously great and necessary for there to be a kid’s rock and roll camp specifically for girls. They need all the encouragement that they can get to be powerful, creative people and succeed against the added barriers that society implicitly places against girls doing such things as well as the overt and entirely real roadblocks for young girls trying to enter the world of playing rock music (guitar stores are surprisingly sexist environments). My problem is that they won’t let me help (I really need money!).

Here are my lady rocker credentials:
-I’m very friendly.

-I own the entire creative outputs of Sleater-Kinney and Bikini Kill (singles and EPs not included) and have listened to Beat Happening, Bratmobile, and Babes in Toyland on purpose.

-I can play 8 instruments.

-I know how to teach the art of swagger and how to do old school rock star kicks, and play a Flying V like it’s your dick. That’s a good skill for anyone to know, regardless of gender.

-I know a Jonas Brothers song.

-In one misplaced moment of over-sympathy I made an argument that excused the existence of Paramore. Then another time I made a similar justification for the New Moon OST. 14 year old girls would eat that shit up.

-I have concise arguments explaining why Joni Mitchell is actually a pretty underrated guitarist and why Kira Roessler is a better bass player than Chuck Dukowski.

-I’ve been in a band with girls before (http://www.myspace.com/dangerousliaisons32). We were good, not great.

-I think I have a Slits album. There’s no reason for that.

-I’m purposely leaving out all of the mixed gender bands that I listen to just to make my resume comply with this girls only approach (except there was a guy in Bikini Kill for a while).

- I know who Lydia Lunch is. Come on!

-I have no game what so ever to speak of so there would be no threat of me hitting on all of my coworkers.

-I don’t do anything ever. As long as I don’t have to work on Monday nights, they can schedule me anytime and I’ll show up with a guitar.

Conclusion:
Look at all of that! This is basically the only job I’m qualified to hold.

Not cool, Girls Rock! Chicago. You’re on my list.

For more info about Girls Rock! Chicago go to: http://girlsrockchicago.org/

To donate to them go to: http://girlsrockchicago.org/give/

If you’d like to send your son or daughter to a more expensive rock and roll summer camp visit: http://www.campjam.com/chicago.html

Sock Monkey Sound

Geronimo! vs. Patrick

Chicago’s Geronimo! have a lot of things going for them. They make awesome music and are pretty fun guys to be around. They also like to play hard and heavy. Those are two of the better adjectives one might use to describe music. Plus they feel ok about referencing Mudhoney without shame. That’s cool too. I recently sat down on my email account and interviewed Kelly Johnson (Guitar/Singing), Ben Grigg (Keys/Singing), and Matt Schwerin (Drums) about various musical topics.

On your Myspace page you claim that, “Sometimes we play really well. Sometimes we play really sloppy. We always play really loud.” What importance do you think that volume plays to rock and roll music?

Kelly Johnson: If we play really loud, we can still sound sort of cool even if we’re playing real crappy. When I see a live band, I want to be able to feel it in my groin. It’s a personal problem, really.

Ben Grigg: Volume creates a much more visceral experience for a listener in a live setting I think. One can become more readily immersed into music if you can physically feel it. It’s also seems more legitimate if you have to be screaming over the roar of the instruments to make yourself heard. It makes it seem like what you are screaming is pretty damn important or intense. Seeing a rock band set-up and play with noticeable restraint on their volume also makes them seem kind of wimpy too I think.

You recently appeared on our flagship podcast. What was that experience like?

KJ: No one at Sock Monkey prepares you for the experience after appearing on the podcast. I can barely finish a meal at Johnny Pamcakes without some chucklehead coming up and jawing off about “you guys are the greatest” or “i love how great you guys are” or “i like great things, and you guys are my favorite great thing” and the like. I didn’t realize it was going to be so tough to be so well-liked. It’s easy to be adored though. And hailed.

Matt Schwerin: It was fun. We got to talk to some buds and play some music. The end result ended up being pretty chatty

Did they offer you rum? They offered Jim Hanke rum.

KJ: We showed up drunk.

BG: No, in fact, we had to bring our own case of beer, which those greedy bastards readily consumed. I’m pretty sure they were sneaking pulls of rum while we weren’t looking too, just so they wouldn’t have to offer us any.

MS: No rum. Maybe we’ll get some next time if our album gets named best Chicago album of the year.

How much of a penis was Pat?

KJ: I’ve seen Pat in penis-mode, and he had more of a schlong thing going on that day. My favorite Pat though, is boner Pat.

MS: Less than anticipated. He did give us some ridiculous nicknames which he printed up on a sticker machine. Mine is too inappropriate to repeat.

You cited Sonic Youth, Fugazi, Nirvana, Ska, and Stoner Rock, as influences. Was that truth or a lie? Do you have any other influences that you forgot to say?

KJ: I can only speak for myself when I say these answers are true. Except not ska. I have a fascination with groovy fuzz rock and girl power pop. My quest in Geronimo! is to find a happy medium between Robyn and The Melvins. This is not a lie.

BG: The ska thing is my fault. It’s what I started listening to on my own and playing first. I have no regrets about it, but it’s not something I’m into anymore. With Geronimo! I just like to play heavy and aggressive stuff and of course I like Sonic Youth, Fugazi, Nirvana, etc, so maybe that comes through.

MS: I think I’m influenced by just about any band I listen to and enjoy. Radiohead will always be an influence, whether my music sounds like them or not. In Table Legs, there is one specific part where my drum part is directly influenced by DJ Shadow’s “Endtroducing”.

I’ve read a couple of things that call you grungy. Do you feel good about that or insulted?

KJ: We’ve been compared to Silverchair twice. I don’t give a fuck if people call us grungy. I unapologetically listen to all things labeled “grunge” and was raised on grunge bands. When I got into indie™ music, I was embarrassed to be caught listening to a band like Nirvana or Soundgarden, but in my ‘old age’ I’ve embraced it. I think the negative associations people have with ‘grunge’ deal with the mopey or depressed sound people stereotype it with, like some of the stuff on In Utero. I don’t think those representations of that ‘musical style’ hold up as strongly though, and if you look at the meat of that time period like early Nirvana, “Goo,” “Badmotorfinger,” or “Superfuzz Bigmuff” it’s just straight, energetic rock music.

BG: It seemed a little strange at first, kind of like “Why are you comparing us to this genre from when we were kids?” but it makes perfect sense to me now. Those bands are what my brother was playing for me when I was a kid. When I think of cool or heavy music, I’m somehow drawn towards that stuff. I don’t think we sound just like Silverchair or whatever but that really doesn’t bother me. I like that sound.

MS: I’m rather indifferent. I certainly don’t see it as a banner to wave around but its not insulting either. The music we play is the natural result of the collaboration between the three individuals in the band and whatever people want to classify it as doesn’t really matter.

Speaking of Nirvana, the Geronimo! Blog (http://deepwarmth.blogspot.com/) has video of you playing a cover of Breed in Little Rock, AR. What prompted that? Did you ever practice it or just decide to play it?

KJ: We practiced it, maybe, 3 times. It’s one of my favorite songs, and it’s real simple. I love that about it. That’s what floors me about Nirvana. All of the songs are jokingly simple, but there is a power in them that still lasts. Bands try so hard to throw everything but the kitchen sink into a rock song, but here you have Nirvana stripping everything down to two chords and a beefy rhythm, and it blows away what most bands could even conjure up in their best song.

I used to know every instrument part of every song on Nevermind (excluding the drum fills). Cool, huh? Even Endless Nameless??!! That song is like, half feedback.

MS: Um…yeah….

Yeah my band in high school would do an Endless Nameless thing at the end of Sonic Youth’s 100% Pretty awesome…
Have you ever tried to write a song in 7/8 time?

MS: I can’t say that I have.

KJ: Yes, it was only 87.5 percent successful. Then we decided to write one where we were soft for a while, then got loud, then got soft again. Then loud.

What is the album called and when does it come out?

KJ:The album is called ‘Fuzzy Dreams.’ It will be officially ‘released’ or what not on April 30, when we play our release show at Schuba’s (18+) in Chicago with our pals Kid, You’ll Move Mountains, polarOPPOSITEbear and Inspector Owl.

Ben and Kelly both use Big Muffs. Why do you like that pedal? Why use the Russian made muff instead of the American?

KJ: I personally just like the way the Russian model sounds. Besides the VERY first distortion pedal I ever used (the Grunge DOD pedal which I still own, blech), the Big Muff is what I grew up using. That exact pedal is the one I used in my first band in late high school/early college. I’m just comfortable with it, and I haven’t found any other pedal that sounds so close to a Tyrannosaurus Rex tearing through a jungle. I have to take a second to thank my friend Joe Robinson, who previously owned the pedal but passed it on to me. I also use his Fender Deville, which he let me borrow like 2 years ago and has not asked for it back. As you can see, Joe is essentially the reason Geronimo! sounds the way they do and the reason we are able to fulfill live obligations.

BG: I started playing with it just for Geronimo! really. It really sounds great with my keyboard and having Kelly and I play mostly with the same distortion helps to blend our instruments a little better at times. Actually, I’m not sure if it does, but it sounds cool.

Your Myspace page also says that Kelly plays, “Asscut Guitar.” What the hell is that?

KJ: When I was living in DeKalb, one night I left my car parked on the street. When I got up the next morning, someone had sideswiped it. The car is a Cutlass Ciera, and the silver ‘Cutlass’ part of the logo got knocked off. I decided to rearrange it to spell ‘Asscut’ and glue it on my guitar. The guitar cuts significantly more asses these days, and I feel it really comes through in our sound.

Ben often seems to play lines that would traditionally be played on a bass. Why use a keyboard instead?

BG: There are a few reasons, really. First, playing bass-like lines on a keyboard as opposed to a bass allows me to play things that might not be possible on a bass. I can play three or more octaves at once and throw some other stuff on top to make a really thick full sound, a big noise. I like it when a three piece sounds like a larger group so I try to make us sound bigger and more full when I can.

Secondly, I don’t play bass. I learned a few Weezer songs once for a Halloween show and that was fun, but I don’t own a bass and I don’t really know how to play one. When we first started jamming as Geronimo!, I was playing keys, so we just kept that as the formula. There didn’t really seem to be any need to add a bass player. It wasn’t so much a decision to play keyboards as bass as it was a natural move based on what the songs needed.

It’s always fun to defy people’s expectations as well. If I saw a band set up with just a keyboard and a guitar I’d probably think they were some sappy Ben Folds style something-or-other. Nothing against that, but I think I’d be pleasantly surprised if they started playing loud aggressive music instead.

The Nord Electro II is my favorite sampler ever. Would you like to comment on that?

BG: What is this, amateur hour? Total bullshit. The Nord Electro II is not a sampler. Ever heard of Google my friend? Geez Louise.

You’re right. That was a test. Good job… Did you see The Office baby special?

MS: No.

KJ: I did see it. I watched about 2 minutes of it then put it on mute and searched for band videos online. Was there a part about Jim trying to change a diaper? Jesus Christ.

No! Jim had practiced on every baby shaped object in the office so he was good at it. But Pam accidentally breast fed the wrong baby.

Anyways- What is your favorite pizza restaurant?

KJ: There is a place in Chicago called Bacci’s where they have ginormously big pieces of pizza for 5 bucks. It also comes with a small drink. I’m generally a quantity over quality man. Actually, we went to a Pizza Hut on tour this past January, and I have to say, it was really nice in there! It’d been a while since we’d all been to one and sat down, but it was real clean and warm. Like gold banister things and lots of classy green.

BG: In Rockford it’s Primo’s Pizza, followed closely by Lino’s. Paisano’s on Main St. used to be number one, but they’ve been closed since I was in high school. Sam’s and Pino’s are up there too. I have to give a shout out to Villa de Roma too for being open and delivering till like 4am on weekends. They rule. So yeah…

MS: Oh boy. There are so many good ones. In Rockford, I’d have to say Sam’s Pizza. In Chicago, there are too many good places to mention but for sheer value, I’ll say Bacci’s. We’ve had the honor of eating at many fine pizza places on the road as well, including two great ones in Little Rock.

Who is your favorite drummer? I want answers from all three. Matt Schwerin is an acceptable answer.

KJ: I don’t care if it’s obvious, I love Dave Grohl. Also, I first realized how cool it was to watch drummers the first time I saw the band Troubled Hubble play. Nate Lanthrum is a behemoth. Also Brian Chippendale from Lightning Bolt. I will say that none of them rock a Michael Jordan shirt like Matt Schwerin though, so the rest of ‘em can go to hell.

BG: I feel a little silly for completely agreeing with Kelly on this one, but I think Dave Grohl was really the first drummer I admired. A bunch of friends of mine and I played in a “band” in early high school and we had a mean cover of Everlong (I’m sure it was terrible actually), but watching my friend Mike play those fills in the chorus really struck me. Troubled Hubble definitely had a huge influence on me as well. Nate was the first drummer I remember who was really fun to watch. He still is, especially watching him and his brother Andrew play together. It’s a treat.

Of course, I have this video of Matt Schwerin playing in Columbus with his shirt off. I watch it at work constantly, and I mean all the time.

Similar to my answer to the band’s influences, I really think I take something away from every drummer that I hear and like. Not sure I could say I have a total favorite. John Bohnam was amazing, yes. I don’t really listen to much Led Zeppelin. But he had the bombast. John Theodore who played in the Mars Volta I liked, also for his bombast. Glen Kotche from Wilco, I dig. Phil Selway from Radiohead.

Finally, what are your hopes and dreams for the future?

KJ: I’m really hoping to buy an adult bed very soon. Right now I’m sleeping on a flat futon mattress in my room. The rest of the guys might say they hope to keep writing songs we are proud of and recording music together. But I know they mostly just want to see me in that adult bed

MS: I would like to continue creating music that I am passionate about. I would like to continue to travel, both while playing music and otherwise. I’d like to be able to support myself working in the photography industry. I’d like to display some of my artwork in galleries. I’d like to fall in love. I’d like to have a family. I’d like to live a life of moral high-ground and love for all creatures. I’d like to continue to grow and challenge myself until the day I die, which hopefully will be in my 80′s or 90′s.

BG: To get back to the year 1985. Preferably with the help of a crazy-haired scientist. It would also somehow involve a Delorean or something. I’m not sure. It’s kind of a pipe dream at this point.

For more Geronimo! fun go to

www.myspace.com/thegeronimoband

or

http://deepwarmth.blogspot.com

Sock Monkey Sound

Ghosts – Donkey Boy U.S.A

by Alex Danger Stewart

With the new Donkey Boy (USA) EP, “A Song for ‘Last Rights,” Dave Decastris delivers a rumination on his favorite theme. The pain and degradation of low class Rockfordians. Those people whose hopes have long since died and for whom pleasure can only be found in the further destruction of their fragile ability to love.

Are you sure?

Yeah, mostly.

“There are ghosts everywhere that I go in this town. There are ghosts everywhere I lay my head down. You could be my only friend. Take my hand, take my hand, take my hand.”

It’s the long story of still born dreams and the ways in which we desperately cling to each other in a desperate attempt to hide the sound of every creeping death. Or something like that.

With the help of a few Anthony Graigs, DBUSA offers us three versions of the song Ghosts. On a sheer economics level, it’s a great deal. For the price of one song (free) we get the final product, the demo, and the bangin club remix (look for that one on the Edmundo Graig 7”). It’s like the Stimulate This tour where all of those Republican bands played for really cheap to stick it to Obama, or something. Like that, but awesome.

The final version of Ghosts came out jagged and haunting with a surprisingly sexy blues undercurrent. It reminds one of the darker side of Gnarls Barkley, or the Black Keys album that Dangermouse produced (which is really redundant, if you think about it) and also very much of Beck; especially some of the more mechanical songs on Charlotte Gainsbourg’s IRM. I’m not positive, but the Ghosts demo might be my favorite mix of the song. Where the single version is sprawling, the demo holds itself close to your ear, feeling intimate and all the more damaged. Like the laptop ruminations of a man on his last legs. A man who has long since run out of friends who don’t come with screw tops. The Emundo Graig remix is pure sugar. A straight up flash of New Order, cocaine, and hair gel. It’s perfect for a quick desk chair salsa.

So I guess the question is: How do you feel? Sexy? Depressed and alone? Piquant? The “A Song for Last Rights” EP has a flavor for each.

Download the EP for free at http://www.donkeyboyusa.com/

Donkey Boy has submitted Ghosts for the soundtrack of a film. Go vote for it here http://www.lastritesfilm.com/friends.html

Sock Monkey Sound

St. Vincent

by Alex Danger Stewart

What:St. Vincent w/ Wildbirds and Peacedrums

Where: The Metro, Chicago, IL

When: 9pm, February 18, 2010

Who: Myself, the bands, that Andrew fellow, this girl named Matti, I think Greg was there, hundreds of others

How Much Did it Cost? $21 cause I was a rube and bought my tickets online instead of going to the box office

[quote]You guys only like her so much because she’s a girl.” [/quote]

A friend recently threw this barb at a group of fellows who were ganging up on her because she wasn’t as completely enamored with the music of St. Vincent as the rest of us. She said it jokingly but I’m going to pretend it wasn’t. Indie pop is serious business. That said, I completely reject the notion that I only enjoy St. Vincent to the extent that I do because Annie Clark is a (beautiful) lady. Sure, I’d love to have her appear on my upcoming reality TV show Let Me Take You out to Dinner. I would also very much enjoy it if she were to appear on the premium cable spin-off Touch Me in Dirty Places*, but that has very little bearing on whether or not I like to listen to her music with pretty solid frequency (I do). I didn’t name Actor as my number one album of 2009 because its creator is really, really cute. I did so because I thought it was a better album than all of the others released in that year (or at least of all of those I listened to). How would my lady readers feel if I suggested that the largest factor in making them semi-rabid Andrew Bird (who has a somewhat similar style) fans was his existence as a very handsome gentleman? Because he totally is (Side note: If someone asked me, “Danger, would you like to kiss Andrew Bird on the mouth?” I would consider the matter and reply, “Why? Did he say something about me?”) My guess is that they would reject the assertion and insist that they enjoy his music on a purely auditory basis. I do the same with St Vincent. The music is incredibly good and the fact that the person creating the music is very attractive is only an ancillary added bonus. Plus the title of St Vincent’s first album was an Arrested Development reference. That’s fucking awesome.

With all of that in mind, I made my way to the scenic Wrigleyville neighborhood and the historic Metro on Thursday, February 18. I’m normally very reluctant to go anywhere on Thursday nights because my Thursday night TV shows are on. Luckily the god damn Olympics were happening so none of my NBC shows were airing that week and it wasn’t that big of a deal if I missed Project Runway. Plus it’s a concert! I often enjoy those. Through that confluence of factors I found myself standing in line at the Metro, ready to hear incredible music and other such things.

The other such things were provided by the opening act Wildbirds & Peacedrums. I don’t want to say that Wb&Pd were bad. They were clearly very competent musicians. The drummer was especially skilled and his level of limb independence was most impressive. I’m going to attribute my entirely nonplussed reaction to their set to the fact that they’re from Sweden and therefore completely insane (It’s ok. I have a friend in Sweden. His name is Dan). I just didn’t understand their crazy Euro point of view that made it seem like music consisting of a drum kit, vocals, and a steel drum would be compelling; and not just kind of odd and a very good time to make the mistake of trying that vanilla flavored Smirnoff the bar had on sale. Apparently the new Vampire Weekend album isn’t exceedingly dissimilar. I don’t like Vampire Weekend.
[quote]
We are waiting on a telegram to give us news of the fall. I am sorry to report dear Paris is burning after all”[/quote]

Maybe the most initially striking thing about St. Vincent is the depth of the music. It’s certainly very outwardly impressive. There is a very strong visceral reaction to the way that songs like “Jesus Saves, I Spend,” or “The Strangers” alternately float and burn. What is somewhat surprising and, in many ways, more compelling is the way that the essential elements of the songs are strong enough to be stripped of almost everything else. For the encore Clark pulled out a Telecaster with a woody, almost acoustic tone and broke into, “Paris is Burning,” from her first album. Shorn of everything but guitar and voice, Clark translated melodies that, on the album, were handled by half a dozen instruments and delivered a completely recognizable performance that held the audience in silence with its quiet power.

The first time I saw St. Vincent live, I was most impressed by how well the touring band was able to recreate such dense recordings. This time it was the way that those songs have evolved and transformed after having been played every night. “Your Lips are Red,” in particular has found new teeth as it snarls where it once smoldered. The noise break before the YLAR’s gauzy coda bounced and swirled off the Metro’s ceiling as it enclosed around our ears. The original arrangements of some songs seemed to have persisted through their innate strength. The skronky, “Marrow,” showcases the kind of unhinged guitar playing that quickens the pulse of many a young punk (although possibly only myself). “Just the Same but Brand New,” came out beautiful and slow building; finally crashing upon us like a careening train finally running out of steam (or a belabored metaphor, you pick). My only complaint of not hearing, “Marry Me,” is small when one considers that it may very well have been replaced with a cover of Nico’s, “These Days” that came paired with a most endearing intellectual deconstruction of Ice Cube’s, “It Was a Good Day.” It’s a fair trade.

Final Verdict: Totally worth missing Project Runway.

(*Editors Note: What Danger does on his own time has absolutely nothing to do with Sock Monkey Sound. We think he’s using humor here. We think.)

Sock Monkey Sound

What: The Clams, Abbot Smile, Woo-Man and the Banana, KAM!

When: January 28

Where: Subterranean, Bucktown, Wicker Park, Chicago, IL

Why are you so damn slow? It’s a complicated answer. Also I had school work and a surprisingly socially active weekend. Get off my back.

I’m not entirely sure of what today’s date (The 5th maybe) is but I went to a very good show last week. Desperate to avoid my RA’s attempts to force socializations, I made my way up to the scenic Wicker Park neighborhood for a night of local rock. I didn’t go completely blank and uninformed. I’ve seen The Clams once before at CJ’s Lounge in Rockford and I’ve enjoyed Clams guitarist/bassist Brett Daniels many times in his other (ed note: former band) band, White Moose. Once I arrived I was slightly disappointed to find that the Clams were headlining. It’s not that I don’t like hearing new bands or wasn’t willing to wait around for the Clams to play (I had already shelled out $8 at the door. Get it? Shelled? Clams? Oh my). But I don’t really like new things. If I could, I would see the bands that I like play exclusively with each other all of the time. Plus I wasn’t really in the mood for Psych-Pop. Since I started going to school here last August almost every new Chicago band I’ve seen has drawn from the same tradition of garagey, reverb drenched, fuzzed out, shoe gazey pop. It’s as if a whole generation of bands (and by that I mean like 20 people) all bought the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy and the Nuggets box set and decided to start bands. Not that I’m complaining. I love both of those releases and prefer the previous adjectives to most others. But sometimes I’d like to hear some variety.

Abott Smile

That tidy segue leads me to Abbot Smile. Though they certainly mine a bit of retro territory (Silver Jews count as throwback sound, right? They were in the past) it is in more of the lofi variety. Awesome, right? Right! I didn’t think the words, “jangle,” or, “ethereal,” once during the set. That is a bit of a relief because those two words have been popping up all too often in these reviews. I left the set with strong thoughts of the aforementioned Silver Jews, as well as Broken Social Scene, Pavement, and Doug Martsch’s voice (not so much the rest of Built to Spill on the instrumentation front). This is a band to watch. http://www.myspace.com/abbottsmile

Woo-Man and the Banana. Say it out loud. This duo apparently plays every gig dressed in a dress and a banana costume? Get it now? The gimmick seems a little trite at first, but once you see the guitarist lurching around the stage in an Edie Sedgwick getup like some disturbed late era Mansonite, it totally works. I learned from a friend of the band that WMATB are originally from Akron, Ohio. This makes perfect sense as their sound holds a lot in common with fellow Akronians (Akronites?) The Black Keys. The songs are short, bluesy, dirty, and barely hang together until they come to a lurching halt. This is to say they’re incredibly fun. In addition to the strong debt to The Black Keys, Woo-Man and the Banana also gave of an Abe Vigoda vibe in their sometimes surfy guitars and the sudden stops and starts of the drums. http://www.myspace.com/abigbomb

[quote]There are a few things that really piss me off when I see a band.[/quote] None are more prominent than bands having really expensive gear that is put to poor use, and generally being top rate douche bags. What more needs to be said about KAM? I’m not going to waste any more words than I have to on their sound. Imagine the Gin Blossoms if the Gin Blossoms wrote really shitty songs (or shittier, if you’ve never found yourself singing along to Hey Jealousy). The band name was apparently chose because the members’ names are Kurt, Aaron (or Adam. Who cares?), and Mark. This does a surprisingly good job of illustrating their level of creativity. As it always seems to happen, KAM brought the crowd. I’m not sure what was worse, the bass player’s incessant mugging and pointing to friends in the audience or this quote from the guitarist/singer as he was tuning, “I made the mistake of putting on new strings today. Well, I had an intern do it for me. But I used to be that intern!” Fuck this band.

The Clams

The Clams sound like the kind of band that your record collecting friend wishes he was in. Their list of influences on Myspace is about 350 words long, but it’s entirely justified in the context of their sound. Although it can certainly be described similarly to the psychedelia that I was previously complaining about, it is done with a self awareness that borders on the post-modern and an expertise that makes them very unique. Also helping is the fact that their droning aspects are not soft and floaty. This is Drone with a capital D. The kind of Boris Drone that you can feel. The combination of Fender Bassman amps and Russian Big Muffs hits you in the gut and washes over everything in waves of power. I like the Clams. http://www.myspace.com/theclamsjam

I do have one complaint about the night, overall. The sound guy at Subterranean is not very good. I understand that there are challenges to running good sound in a long narrow room, but he needs to step up his game. When you’re surrounded by the kind of real estate that SubT is, it shouldn’t be asking too much to hear more snare definition and an overall less muddled mix.

Final Verdict: 4 $3.50 Tall Boys out of 5

Sock Monkey Sound

Where: The Beat Kitchen, Chicago, IL

When: January 16, 2010

Why is this Significant? Joie Motherfucking Headlined The Beat Kitchen!

So last weekend I made my way up to the Beat Kitchen on the scenic north side of Chicago. Yes, last week. I don’t work fast, I work smart. Ok, I don’t work very smart either. And to be honest, someone beat me to posting a review. She had that shit up before I even woke up on Sunday. You should go read it here (http://reviewsic.com/2010/01/17/in-review-the-beat-kitchen-116/). It’s pretty good, save one glaring disagreement (more on that later). Since the other writer covered most of what I have to say about music, I’m gonna ramble a bit.

If anyone has ever encountered me at a Chicago show, they’ve probably had a conversation that went something like this,

You: Hey man. How are you?

Danger: Fantastic! I got lost for a little while but I totally made it here!

You: That’s great.

Prolonged awkward silence

Danger: How are you?

You: Oh I’m good. I…

Danger: Cool. I’m gonna go get another beer.

My ability to get lost knows no bounds. But I totally figured out a system for which to mostly combat it. First I grab a yellow post it note and write out comprehensive directions courtesy of Google Maps (including special alternate directions in case I start walking in the wrong direction when I get off the train or bus). Then I write out a second set of directions to get me home from the club and place it in my wallet as a backup in case I can’t decipher the reverse order of my original lyrics because of certain consumptions that may have occurred.

Because of such precautions, I made it to the Beat Kitchen in a very timely manner. Mountains for Clouds played first. Their name is of a rare variety that gives an almost complete description of the band’s sound. Their brand of ambient instrumentals was quite impressive. Their playing was notably tight (I was very surprised when I later found out that they’re a relatively young band) and properly restrained. This was especially true of guitarist Andrew Stefano. He used looping and finger tapping (both tools that are notoriously abused) in a way that was both deliberate and unique. Kudos to Mountains for Clouds.

Empire Empire (I Was A Lonely Estate) has a band name that is too long by half. That’s my only real complaint. They’re tight and it’s quite obvious why they share a label with Joie De Vivre. Classic Emo that falls into the same description that bloggers seem to love. This band could have been on Jade Tree 12 years ago. I say that without owning any actual Jade Tree releases, but I understand what the reference means.

The Field Auxiliary is the only place where my reaction was drastically divergent from that of the Reviewsic’s writer. She found them to be mostly excellent where as I was left with mostly negative to indifferent feelings. I totally got what The Field Auxiliary was going for. It seemed clear that they were aiming towards a shoegazey power pop vibe. One part Weezer, two parts My Bloody Valentine and Ride. They have the swirl, but they need to work on the pulse. The secret of shoegaze is that you need to have at least one of the instruments playing clean to form a background for all of the swirling business to build on. Without that, the whole affair just seems motionless. Also, the singer set up a 2nd synthesizer on a stand above his electric piano and (by my count) never played it. That’s lame.

Isn't that guy on the left in TPATY?

I don’t have a lot to say about Joie De Vivre. There are a couple of reasons for that. This band gets a lot of (deserved) press and I’m close enough to them that I feel kind of weird saying anything overly praiseworthy. They don’t need another drip in a plaid shirt raving over Local, Local. They’ve grown to be quite good but I feel much more comfortable giving them shit. Also they may go on tour soon, and I’m hoping Stewart Oakes will have to work so JDV will ask me to go along as an instrument tech/merch guy. Anyway, I was briefly in a band with two members of Joie. You should check it out because it was mostly better http://www.myspace.com/wsdown.

There are two bands that I haven’t seen recently but would really like to mention:

Geronimo

I’ve never written about Geronimo and I feel really badly about it because they’re probably my favorite local band. I’ve started at least 3 reviews of gigs that Geronimo played only to trash them for other reasons. So here it is now. Geronimo is really really good. They are noisy and heavy in ways that many current bands are just too afraid to approach. These boys are loud and their mastery of dynamics suggests a skill in their playing that, once again, sets them apart from the pack. One review said that they sound like, “Violent Femmes on crank after they stole Cobain’s distortion pedals.” That’s just incredibly cool. I hope they find a way to record an album with Steve Albini. He’ll know what to do. http://www.myspace.com/thegeronimoband

The Please & Thank Yous

Unlike Geronimo, TPATY don’t have any clue about what the fuck they’re doing. That is what’s great about them. They’re hopelessly shambolic in all of the right ways. Classic, cartoonish pop punk. Nice. http://www.myspace.com/tpaty

Sock Monkey Sound

[quote]2009 was very much a transitory year for me.[/quote] Late last year, I made a conscious decision to stop being an asshole about new indie rock and open my ears to new music. There are a few reasons for this. I was growing tired of (re)listening to the same Mission of Burma, Radiohead, and Voidoids albums over and over, tired of my top ten lists being generated by thinking of the ten (or fewer) new albums that I bought that year and placing them in an arbitrary order, tired of not recognizing any music from the best publications’ year end lists, and tired of being known as the 90s guy (don’t get me wrong, music from the 90s is invariably better). Also, I was losing my sanity in a very real way (still am, technically) and my insides were craving music of a more sensitive nature. So I made the decision to end 2009 being much more aware and involved with releases by new, smallish bands. I actually made it my New Years’ Resolution. Most normal, responsible people may have resolved to do markedly better in school, or get a girlfriend, or lose 30 lbs because they care about such things. I cut my hair, stopped doing shots, and started listening to Grizzly Bear. I’m ok with my choices. Are you?

Top 10 Albums

1. St .Vincent-Actor

I didn’t hear St. Vincent’s debut when it came out, but I think it’s safe to say that Annie Clark spent much of the interim pondering darkness. Where as Marry Me explored Clark’s choice dichotomy through the juxtaposition of beautifully orchestrated pop with often disconcertingly dark lyrics (the title track makes my stomach flip in ways that few songs can); Actor finds her turning things up. The beauty is still there in folds, as are the lyrics filled with characters that would feel at home in a Phillip Roth novel or anything Sam Mendes has ever worked on. What has been added is a confidence in letting her guitar playing become so unhinged that it can often only be described by craven misspellings of the word, “Rock”, (think rawk). Songs quickly take unexpected turns from blithe woodwinds to the kind of fuzzed out atonality that makes your skin feel greasy. All the while Clark’s voice floats above the fray like an ethereal narrator. When I saw St. Vincent in June, Clark introduced a song in the same unassuming way she rips into a solo, “This song is called, ‘The Party.’ Don’t worry; it’s not the kind you would want to be at.” Au contraire, miss. I’m pretty sure it is.

2. Grizzly Bear-Veckatemist

I don’t know what to say about Grizzly Bear that hasn’t already been hyperbolized by the bloggeratti (that’s a real thing. I didn’t think it was but Sarah Palin informed me that I was incorrect). This band is really fucking good. They made a group of songs that are of awe inspiring quality. There’s no need to complicate it with anything else.

3. Yo La Tengo- Popular Songs

The criticism that one always hears is that the music of Yo La Tengo sounds like the output of a group of people with a larger record collection than social life. I fail to see how that could ever be taken pejoratively. Now decades into their career, Yo La Tengo have the supreme confidence (both as a group and as individual musicians) to mine their mammoth influences in any way they see fit. No place is this more evident than the trio of 10+ minute songs that close the album. It’s an admittedly ballsy move but the Tengos play it off nonchalantly as if to say, “Well yeah, that’s how long the songs needed to be. Would you get out of the way? We’re trying to play here.” Popular Songs sounds like Yo La Tengo. Which is to say it sounds like everything.

4. Regina Spektor-Far

Regina Spektor is an oddity in many ways. Her music is poppy and mainstream in most every sense of the word. But, like the majority of most amazing pop music, she has a genius for melody and lyrics that are, if not subversive, exponentially more intelligent, thoughtful and cheekily perverse than their glossy exterior would suggest. In other news, I love writing incredibly long sentences. That’s not to say that there is anything wrong with any aspect of these songs or their presentation. Although it lacks any instantly classic songs like Begin to Hope’s, “Samson,” or, “Fidelity,” Far is choked full of beautiful melodies and thought provoking songs that feel familiar in ways that only the best can. Songs like, “Genius Next Door,” and “Wallet,” demand repeat listening and even the disposable dance track, “Dance Anthem of the 80’s” reveals itself to be anything but. This is the smartest album you will ever see in a VH1 video block. I guarantee it.

5. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart-The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

This is your favorite dream pop band; you just may not know it yet. It’s sometimes difficult to defend the derivation of throwback bands, but not when they do it so damn well. The fuzz, the jangle, the simple sentimentality, the remarkably spot on name; everything about this band is nearly perfect. Most of all the songs. The appeal of a song like, “Everything With You,” grabs your heart and pulls you out of your chair. This band may not be doing anything new, but it works.

6. The Thermals- Now We Can See

The Thermals

I love The Thermals (so much that I once wrote a song about them). Bright, bubbly, exuberant indie rock. Now We Can See sounds a lot like their last record, and that’s the magic of it. Another album that makes me want to jump in the air. Another album that makes me smile. I love the Thermals.

7. Mastodon- Crack the Skye

By my reckoning, Mastodon is generally enjoyed for a few reasons. They’ve proven a strong capability to be REALLY heavy (as evidenced by Leviathan), incredibly fleet footed (much of Remission will attest to this) and more than willing to engage in proggy nonsense that is usually undeniably awesome (my favorite examples being a passage of the song, “Capillarian Crest” that a Drum magazine transcription claims is in 21/16 time. Also see the craziness of each album’s concept as well as the extended length of many songs). Crack the Skye isn’t Mastodon’s heaviest work, nor their most musically complicated. It is, however, their most concise. This strong self editing combined with a new found passion for guitar solos and moodiness, as well as their strongest concept since Leviathan make Crack the Skye Mastodon’s most emotionally and musically direct release to date. There’s something to be said for such things.

8. Sonic Youth- The Eternal

I really shouldn’t have to explain this. Any year that Sonic Youth releases an album is one with a Sonic Youth album among the ten greatest. The consistency is staggering. The Eternal finds Sonic Youth fully within their comfort zone; blasting out music that is loud, churning, dissonant and (in short) radical. The Eternal also finds me fully in my own comfort zone; listening to Sonic Youth.

9. Girls-Album

Am I growing redundant in my use of adjectives? I feel this entry will continue the trend of praising beautiful simplicity. Here we go anyway. Ignore the biography of Christopher Owens. As compelling of a story as it is, it only serves to pull attention away from the quality of work on display. Album is a piece of yearning and desperation that can only exist as a debut album. With his voice a wounded yelp and music steeped in a classicism that continues to be returned to because it continues to work, Owens’s work doesn’t wrap itself in any sort of detached safety. It is directly honest, and powerful because of it.

10. M Ward- Hold Time

M Ward plays a funny game with his listeners. He sounds old. Both in his voice and his style. His sound is decidedly country and very reminiscent of Sun Records, but it is in no way retro. When one actually tries to find an artist of that era to compare Ward to, they are struck by the fact that he has no direct comparisons. His sound is, in many ways, far too refined and restrained to be of any era except the present. It’s an odd thing to say of an album this unpretentiously dedicated to good times. These are not songs of loss, but songs of togetherness. Ward knows the sound that he wants and he holds to it; making music for dancing in your living room or sitting on your porch with a glass of whiskey. I enjoy both activities, thus this album works for me.

Top Albums That are Remarkable Achievements but Don’t Fill Me with Enough Joy to Make the List

1. Dirty Projectors-Bitte Orca
2. Jim O’Rourke- The Visitor

Really Good Albums That Just Barely Missed the List

1. Dinosaur Jr – Farm
2. Vivian Girls – Everything Goes Wrong
3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!
4. Telekinesis – Telekinesis!
5. Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
6. Converge – Axe To Fall

Special Award for Awesomeness

1. The Braves-The Leaves Are Black/Quiet Hushed Animals

I bought the Quiet Hushed Animals LP in 2007, and most of the other songs have been on the band’s myspace page for quite a while so I can’t really put this compilation (released in November 2009) on the normal list. Despite that, I feel like it requires mention. Being able to listen to these songs in my car has shone a new light on their awesomeness. I can’t even think about, “Cool, Cold Grass,” without wanting to listen to it again. After typing that sentence I just opened iTunes and started playing it. I put in this CD when my mom brought me home from school for Christmas break (yeah I’m cool like that) and was astonished by how good it is. Sometimes I listen to it twice in a row. Get to the end of, “O’Vira,” and start back again at, “The Misery of Marching.” There’s just no stopping these melodies. They’re like Jason Statham in Crank 2. They could probably survive falling out of a helicopter.

Alex Danger Stewrat is a contributing writer to Sock Monkey Sound. His last name is actually Stewart but I thought it would be funny if I left my typo in.

Sock Monkey Sound

I’m sure you’re all familiar with Macy’s. The worldwide Thanksgiving Parade department store that most of you probably never shop at because you’re much more reasonable about clothing than I am. The downtown Macy’s is especially unbearable around this time of year. After the entire backlash for buying out and then renaming the flagship Marshall Fields.

- Just a tangent here for everyone who got all uppity and bitched about that. Marshall Fields went under because no one shopped there. No one shopped there because it sucked and was dirty and not very nice. If you loved it as much as you claim, why didn’t you shop there more often? Because it sucked and was dirty and not very nice. Macy’s is way better -

Macy’s has felt compelled to go to obscene lengths to remind everyone that Christmas is almost happening. Because of all this tackiness, one wouldn’t assume that such a store would be a good place to eat. They would be wrong. Dead wrong. As one makes their way through the labyrinth of garishness up to the 7th floor food court, they’re met with a great surprise. Sitting next to a Frontera Fresco (very good fast Mexican food in it’s own right, although it’s slightly redundant since Rick Bayless’s far superior fast service restaurant Xoco is just across the river on Clark) is Marc Burger. I have no idea why, but world renowned Chef Marcus Samuelsson has launched a fast food burger restaurant in the food court of Macy’s. You may know Samuelsson as the youngest chef ever to receive a 3 star review from the New York Times and a former recipient of the designation, “Best Chef in New York City,” by the James Beard Foundation. He most recently catered the Obama Administration’s first state dinner (You know, the one with those crazy party crashers). Apparently he is also dedicated to serving random people truly amazing hamburgers.

What I Ate: Cheeseburger with white cheddar and thick cut bacon.
Was it Amazing?: Yes!

I should give you some background. Hamburgers are one of my favorite things ever. No hyperbole. They are literally my 4th favorite thing in existence on this planet. I have my moments of McDonald’s gratuity, but I actually have a pretty discerning palate. Given my druthers, I would always prefer a tremendous piece of meat on a quality bun with a tomato, small amount of butter or mayonnaise, and no other condiments. That’s what is so remarkable about these burgers. The meat comes from antibiotic free, grass fed, American cattle and is fresh lean and succulent. The grill jockey has shockingly high standards and cooks the meat to just the right temperature; leaving a flavor filled juicy extravaganza. Slapped onto a potato roll and topped with white cheddar, and smoky delicious thick cut bacon, I am left muttering obscene exclamations as I sit next to a table full of worried old women. No seriously, today was my 2nd visit and I (who have an admittedly sizable vocabulary) was reduced to random whispers of, “God damn,” through bites of burger. The sandwich also comes with very good seasoned fries, very mild pickles, and a notable slaw, but it doesn’t matter. Eating this burger is like the first time you hear Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’, eat foie gras, or see a woman’s breasts. Your life is just not the same. Ever.

Alex Danger Stewart is a contributing writer to Sock Monkey Sound and once dressed as The Hamburgler for Halloween when he was 7 years old. Granted, I have no proof of this. But I’m sure he’ll let this moment of revisionist history slide.

Sock Monkey Sound

What: A review of Warren Franklin’s album ‘Stray’
Why: Because he asked me to.
Is it Available Now? Yes

*Note: I listened to this on computer speakers because I don’t have room in my apartment for a stereo. Because of this, I refrained from saying much about the sound quality *

Album reviews are an odd thing. Or at least they often seem that way. Film has some nearly objective ideas from which one can judge the merits of storytelling, shot composition, etc on a more academic level. Even the quality of live shows is somewhat dependent on the reaction of the crowd. A performer garnering their praise or alienation can, in turn, be used as a foundation for a positive review. But reviewing an album is a different beast. Ideally, I suppose that one is supposed to give an impression or preview of what the album has in store for potential listeners and shoot for some sense of object definition in regards to quality-despite the fact that contemporary criticism is clearly entirely subjective, one still wants to be decisive in their style. Halfhearted statements prefaced with the phrase, “in my opinion,” are just bad writing. The downfall can come at the hands of alternately falling too far towards feigned objectivity or being unable to escape the hugely personal nature of music listening. I’ve maneuvered around this issue in different ways throughout the year. In high school I copied reviews from Entertainment Weekly and Spin (two magazines that I was sure my elderly journalism teacher didn’t read). Later when writing practice reviews and personal blogs, I only reviewed those albums of which I knew inside out and could explicate in any number of different ways. Now I just hijack another man’s review for my own individual musings. It works in some ways, it’s clearly better than indefinite, halfheartedness.

No one would accuse Warren Franklin of being halfhearted (nice segue!). His debut album, Stray, falls solidly into the category of uber earnest acoustic guitar fellow. This earnestness is both commendable and risky. As an often glib fellow who takes time to point out his own clever writing, I find the sincerity to be quite notable. This guy clearly cares. Songwriters can rarely go wrong with writing honestly from the heart (the quote at the top of the page is one of my favorite non sequitur lines in recent memory). One of the most commendable facets of his album is the restraint shown in its production. Apart from scattered organ, cello, and tambourine, most songs consist only of Franklin’s voice and guitars. The lushly arranged moments come at times that feel natural and rarely dishonest. The album also makes strengths of two of Franklin’s more prominent drawbacks. The harshness of his yell and his sometimes overly strong attack on the guitar can be off-putting live but they are put to good use. In lieu of drums, an acoustic guitar lays down a solid rhythmic base, especially on a song like, “Damned.” Franklin finds a fine platform for bellowing like a psychopath in songs like, “Asleep” in which he brings to mind Isaac Brock’s more unhinged moments and, “Stray” which one could understandably mistake for a cut off of the quieter half of the Foo Fighters’ In Your Honor. It finds less success in, “God Given Right” and “You Spoke of the Lord,” where the harshness feels out of place next to smoother vocal elements.

Franklin should get special praise for thanking himself in the liner notes of the album as well as getting Brandon Lutmer to sing, “Whoa oh ohhhh,” on “You Spoke of the Lord.” I’m sure it was a moment that few other people other than me will laugh at.

Conclusion: If you see Warren perform somewhere, buy this album. Or buy me a drink. I’m sure I’ll be there.

Contact Warren Franklin at myspace.com/warrenfranklin

Alex Danger Stewart is a contributing writer to Sock Monkey Sound. Email him at thedangerzone@sockmonkeysound.com

Sock Monkey Sound