the Believer 2006 Compilation

Last year's Believer music compilation was one of my favorite compilations all year. The idea was simple; contemporary artists covering their peers. Likewise, this year has an idea that they are attempting to run with, which is marginal acts recorded live, often with binaural microphones. Frankly, last year's idea was better and produced a better album, but this year's comp attempts something quite different and succeeds in its own way.

Before I review the album, I would address a Pitchfork review of the 2005 Believer music compilation. While Pitchfork often offers sound reviews, its review of the Believer 2005 comp was one of the most troubled reviews I have read, and addressed the identity crisis that Pitchfork has. Ultimately, Pitchfork has a standard of new and interesting music chosen by its editors, and while it is thoroughly open to a wide variety of music, it has its prejudices, its limits and own collective self-denial. For example, Pitchfork issued its own mix of sorts on e-music which highlights artists performing at the Pitchfork festival this year. Of the twenty-four bands presented there is only one, Yo La Tengo, featuring a woman. Despite this there are many capable reviews of avante-garde, hip-hop, freak folk and metal, but frankly none of these are very far from a musical sensibility that is essentially an indie-rock one, and a potentially dated one subsequently, with groups like Modest Mouse and Pavement figuring as the subtext by which many artists are held.

Rob Mitchum, the reviewer for Pitchfork, began the review "if you're not already aware of it, The Believer is the life partner of Dave Eggers' literary journal McSweeney's" (Life partner? Are we supposed to read lit-fags here? ) is comically candid when he admits that Pitchfork is the "house that snark built," in response to Believer editor Heidi Julavets' declaration of snark-free intentions. Mitchum's review proceeds warily through the tracks, keeping an arms-length away from the freak-folk material, which may be passe soon, while not condeming it either. The only differences I had with him on a song by song rundown is a matter of taste. I thought Jim Guthrie's fine version of Nightime/Anytime was at best as good as the Constantine's cover of an Elevator to Hell song, and that the Espers cover of Fursaxa's "Firefly Refrain" and Mount Eerie's cover of Thanksgiving's "Waterfalls" were great tracks on their own. Minor differences, so what? It was the last paragraph that made me pause. Here is what I'm talking about:

"A collection of contemporary covers like this one might work with a greater variety of sounds, or at least artists who listen to a greater variety of sounds-- why is the music world covered by The Believer devoid of hip-hop, electronic, or anything not made by (usually acoustic) guitars or the occasional harp? While the magazine is usually adept at pointing people towards wrongfully neglected corners of literature and art, this insular compilation does nothing but point at itself."

It strikes me as conflicted that a compilation like the Believer's would be recieved as "insular" because it does not accurately represent the "musical world". As on the 2006 compilation, the editors seemed to be creating an album that cohered, and on which Jay-Z or Hot Chip would probably be more disruptive than anything. One of the only hip-hop related artists I can think of that would have made sense on the album is Cody ChesnuTT, partly because God only knows what he would cover, and partly because he doesn't really rap. The album coheres as a statement about marginal rock and folk, and what's wrong with that? For most people listening to the cd, being pointed toward "wrongfully neglected corners" doesn't necesarily entail dance music, and besides, are hip-hop and electronic music really that wrongfully neglected?

I think the struggle as a music-critic is always to be open to a field that would overwhelm you if you let it. Certainly classical and world music are not done justice on Pitchfork. But for Mitchum to criticize this album as being insular implies indie rock itself is a closed circle, and I don't think that's true. Without hip-hop we wouldn't have the beat on Cocorosie's "Ohio," without New Wave we wouldn't have San Serac's contribution, and without electronic music there wouldn't have been a Postal Service song to cover, albeit listlessly.

The final phrase is the most troubling, where Mitchum calls the compliation a finger pointing at the Believer's self. What Mitchum implies is that hip-hop constitutes some sort of other, and the various artists here, by virtue of being indie rockers, are therefore homogenous, and moreover homogenous with the Believer's readers. This is troubling, since Mitchum started his essay calling the Believer the "periodical meeting place for the young, hip, and literary." What is enuciated finally is not a fair critique of the album, but a testament to the insecurity of Pitchfork's take on indie rock culture. When stripped away from the false pretense that Pitchfork is firmly ensconced in the musical scene by virtue of a few hip-hop and electronic acts which sometime seem as symbolic as actually deserving of attention, we get a view of indie rock culture as a culture self-conscious by design. For Mitchum to critcize the Believer's insularity seems like a critique enunciated from a false position. Unlike Pitchfork, the Believer compliation does not presume to speak for "young, hip" contemporary music in toto.

Pitchfork's presumption to speak for "hip" music is both a source of the hubris articulating Mitchum's pointed finger, and the insecurity which drives Pitchfork staff to push outward toward the boundaries of what is important music. Obviosuly, I thought more of the value of this particular album than they did, but partly because I felt Mitchum looked at the album as a collection of singles, some good some bad, while I felt it worked well together. Similarly this year's album works well, keeping the proceedings intimate,by recording many of the songs into a minidisc player from live performances with binaural microphones, which, as they mention in the magazine, most closely approximate the hearing process of the human ear. On some tracks this works quite well, on others it simply sounds like standard lo-fi, but I appreciate that they had an idea and ran with it. The album features lo-fi folkiness by Think About Life and Six Organs of Admittance, a live Destroyer song, and a track by Sunn O)))'s Stephen O'Malley and a hidden track by Spoken Tongues. The only track I have reservations about is by Blood on teh Wall, which I have heard about but was dissapointed by here. The garage rock punchiness of it seems out of place and poorly recorded. Otherwise, the songs compliment each other, from the faux-owl hoots leading the album, to Leslie Feist's lovelorn lyrics leading into O'Malley's droning chords, to Mamadou Diabate's shimmering modal harmonies and finally to Dan Bejar's great lyrics, sung exuberantly over his Verlainesque guitar phrases. The magazine on the other hand, has some moments of lag. Despite the promise, Ben Gibard interviewing Wayne Coyne is a bit boring, and the sections on Don Delillo talking about Bob Dylan are not particularly illuminating concerning Dylan or Delillo's Great Jones Street. The Stephen O'Malley interview, on the other hand, is funny and charming. I wouldn't have previously thought myself to be a candidate for enjoying Sunn O))), having not been much interested after hearing their cd, but this interview made me put seeing Sunn O))) live on my things to do list.

My favorite song on this album may well be Neung Phak's "Cheer." I heard Neung Phak open for the Sun City Girls at the Empty Bottle a few years ago, and it was one of the best shows I've ever been to. Both acts went far beyond presenting music, and actively challenged the concept of concerts. Neung Phak began their set twenty minutes before they took the stage, walking through the dense crowd in a procession with flutes and chimes in outfits somewhere between indie geeks and Mr. Miyagi. They took the stage and began playing danceable songs heavily inflected with East-Asian seventie's surf rock influence, using a great deal of call and response between the male band and the two female lead singers. About fifteen minutes into the set someone began heckling them. Really loudly. It became obnoxious to the point that the person was making a scene, until to everyone's surprise, he jumped up on stage and began barking orders about how the music should be played. Most everyone was onto the premise unfolding by then, but it was no less a spectacle as it played out over the next half hour. The heckler grabbed the mike, scared the women off and demanded the band play the music in a certain way while he sang over it. Of course he began singing in Thai dialect as well, in a harsh grating voice which soon had the crowd and the musicians on stage heckling him. I remember this going on for a little while before the Thaiwanese ladies returned in very strange costumes, and what followed could only be described as an exorcism whereby the heckler, perhaps standing in for self-consciousness incarnate, was driven from the stage through the power of some ritual. It was not easy either; no aethereal song which made the heckler leave, but a rather violent (though not physically) and protracted struggle between heckler-demon and singer-angels which lasted for what seemed a long time. I wasn't sure if I had enjoyed what I had just seen or not by the time they finished; I had to think about it. I have thought about this show more than any other I've seen, surely a tribute to it in some way. The song on the Believer album on the other hand, while a bit bizarre, is nothing but enjoyable.

Also, you can visit the Believer's website and find an exclusive interview with Jamie Lidell.

*Pitchfork review of the 2005 music issue:
http://pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/16789/Various_Artists_The_Believer_2005_Music_Issue_CD

Thom Yorke

I was eager to listen to the Eraser, in part because it's being released on XL among labelmates Devendra Banhart, Peaches, Dizzee Rascal and Tapes 'n Tapes, but also because I have been more interested in Radiohead since Hail to the Thief. What seemed occasionally indulgent and overwrought on previous efforts began to come into focus. The nice thing about Yorke's self-obsession is it demands constant over-appraisal, and ellicits constant change. Likewise I expected this album (a Thom Yorke solo? He would say otherwise) to be a few steps ahead of HTTT, and hey, it is. It returns to the over-processed music Yorke is fond of paired with Yorke's Goreyesque humor and love of sociological implication. On Eraser, as on HTTT and hopefully the forthcoming Radiohead works, the experimentation of Kid A and Amnesiac is streamlined, and rather than focus his melody on the dissonance created by the ProTools method Yorke seems to have discovered on OK Computer, he uses it to complement the songs he has. For all the talk of Radiohead's music being intentionally obscurant, they have always been writers of pop music, and this album is strong piece of pop music. Thom's comfortableness with the processing of sounds seems well anchored here, despite the speed bump of Skip Divided. So far the tracks standing out to me are Eraser, Black Swan, Harrowdown Hill and Cymbal Rush. They all have the strong floating focus that Yorke achieves at his best. Black Swan even sounds like a Beck song for a second. Two artists came to mind listening to this record; Jan Jelinek who seems to be increasingly either influencing or influenced on/by Radiohead, I can't tell. Probably both. His latest creaky release "Kosmischer Pitch" is a brilliant piece of processed music that rivals the work of Julian Fane, a Canadian fellow who writes more pop-oriented electronic which still indulges in Fennesz-influenced texturing. If you can listen to Fane's Book Repository you should, it's a great song.

The art on the Eraser was done by Stanley Donwood, who has done most of the Radiohead album art for the last decade or so. Stan's art work is always a spectacle. Hail to the Thief, taking heavy visual cues from painters Peter Davies and Jules de Balincourt, displayed a post-9-11 concern about national identity and the hollowness of rhetoric. The black and white imagery on Eraser, on the other hand, seems like a cross between Edward Gorey and Japanese scroll paintings, signalling a turn from the bemused engagement with language to a more inspired, eschatological scenery, featuring the tall buildings of London awash like a sea. A prescient imagining of post-global warming Europe? The image seems imbued with, as Yorke describes on Analyze, "A self fulfilling prophesy of endless possibility...there's no spark, no light in the dark..." Could the flood be simply an attempt to understand the ravages of time by imagining them as unified image? It's possible, it's possible.
The Guardian's review of Eraser is a great example of the cliche that rock critics have created for Yorke and Radiohead generally; that they snubbed their audience following OK Computer. While they may have created indulgent albums following OK Computer, they never strayed far from pop, or ceased touring, recording or interviewing for long. Thom Yorke's attitude toward major music-review organs reminds me of what Thomas Pyhcon said about being a recluse, which is that "recluse" when mentioned by journalists, means "doesn't like to talk to journalists." On that note, is there a rule among professional reviewers that when talking about Thom Yorke or his work, the adjectives "dreary," "cranky," "grumbling," or "mumbling" have to be used several times each? They may be occasionally apt, but they have become banal stuffing for reviews that have nothing to say. Radiohead remains one of Britain's great bands and I don't think the music press always knows what to make of it. Pitchfork is no exception; besides lamenting the lack of "open space" they make the useless sugggestion of playing this record and Johnny Greenwood's Bodysong as the same time. Had Radiohead done what was expected of them after OK Computer, they probably would be about as relevant as Oasis right now, but instead they have kept fans on the edge of their seats despite being described at every turn as conceptual, grumbling, cranky, etc, in short everything that belies the traditional idea of rock bands as dumb sexy beasts. Perhaps Yorke was alluding to the pencil of someone writing a review of this album; "the more you erase me / the more I appear...."

The album succeeds exactly where some would have it fail; in its optimism. Yorke may sing about hungry worms seeing "what's up" and chant "it's fucked up" and "it's unstoppable," but somehow this is more optimistic to me than hearing Ted Nugent sings about San Francisco girls, or Sufjan Stevens about the midwest for that matter. Yorke is dealing with the worms and phantoms of dread that everyone else is, but rather than shunt them, he makes his demons dance. And that is good fun. Isn't doom a bit easier to cope with in a song?

World Cup 2006

Jammed to the walls, Italy and France supporters mingled in the Small Bar with people only there for a drink and a game, like myself. Not that I didn't have my team, but I didn't know the football chants that would periodically rise to the rafters, none except the simple and familiar USA USA USA! that began after an on-camera glimpse of President Clinton swilling wine in the crowd. The whole bar erupted into cheers at that point, and the all-too familiar chant resounded for nearly five minutes. Well, another World Cup, another four years until the games kick off in South Africa. Hopefully things will be different, the US will be ready to play and some African teams will be more serious contenders. I was dissapointed that Nigeria didn't make the cut this year, they are usually a great team to watch.

I was the one holding my head when someone snapped a picture of soccer fans reacting to the final goal kick scored by Marco Materazzi, the fifth and final overtime kick, securing the World Cup for the Italians. I was rooting for France: not only because I have spent time there and have thought about it often in the last year as they have gone through upheavals in their suburbs, but because they had a great crew all around; staunch, not as inspired as Brazil or tough as the Italians, but scrappy and acting like a perenial underdog that might pull it through. Ultimately they lost by a single penalty kick, begging again the question that was raised when Brazil took the cup in 1994 of whether or not the cup should be decided on penalty kicks or the rules regarding the final should be rewritten. I think rewritting is called for. The experience of a PSO not only gives the victor a half-hearted victory but the fans an unsatisfying conclusion to what should be a tournament based qualities of the whole team. Can you imagine if the NBA championship was decided on free throws? FIFA should end the game after the second overtime and the teams should play again in the following days.

France football will have to deal now not only with the defeat but with a new troubled icon of football mythology; the violence of Zidane. Zidaned is now an icon to football only; he is retiring afer this World Cup, or I should say, he is retired. His brutal headbutting of Materazzi, the player who ultimately sealed France's defeat, was the final act of his soccer career. As he walked to the locker room from the field after being expelled he must have passed the cup, on display for both teams as they made their way to the field. How sad. Materazzi may have felt Zidane's thump, but how quickly did that pain dissapear after Materazzi scored the final penalty kick, becoming, in a second, the victor, the receiver of the crowd roar becoming a buzz in his blood, of the green field expandeding away from him, and the levy of faces collapsing in.

I have had the conversation so many times it deserves distilling here; why soccer in the US? I don't know honestly, why any one sport would be necesarily more popular than any other. For myself, I grew up watching soccer, dreaming about taking the pitch against the Italians or the Brazilians, mesmerized by the ball's arc and the tension between the player's ability and law of gravity. I can always watch soccer games; the action is constant, the games' ebb and flow decided by moments of unplanned virtuosity. In American football there seems no comparison; long periods of waiting, failed plays that reveal little about the creativity of the players. While football and baseball place emphasis on execution, soccer places emphasis on stamina and mutual creativity. Even in a dead heat, a soccer game will hold my interest longer than the halting action of a baseball game.

Besides this there is the political and social implications of soccer. Why is there not more on television? Partly because it is a sport more popular amongt imigrant populations. The foci of quality playing is in Europe and South America, as well pockets in Mexico, Africa, central America, Asia and only recently the United States. But soccer fans in the US are not the people advertisers want to target, and the advertisers after all decide what gets airtime on main stations. There are still many football, basketball and baseball fans more willing to go out to games and watch them on television. But soccer is gaining ground, with more youths playing than before, meaning more people sharing the vision I had once of the brilliance of the game. I have heard this is one of the most watched cups in the US besides the 1994 games, and perhaps including those.

As I grow older I am moved by another quality of the game, the global quality which is notably missing other major sports. While there are great players of baseball in Japan, for instance, many of the great players come here. We are the epicenter for these major sports, and to indulge them at the expense of others for that reason seems in line with a certain conservative isolationist leaning. Is soccer a game for multi-culti liberals. To a certain extent it is. Is one is as xenophobic as Bill O'Reilly or, apparently, the majority of our Senate, it might be hard to swallow the sport event of the year being dominated by France, at least with all those freedom fries in their mouths. To love soccer is to love not only a game, but a passion shared wide beyond the borders of our political hegemony. It is both divisive and uniting, for sure, to have nations playing against each other, depending on where you place the accent. I tend to place it on the uniting quality, because it seems that otherwise would be capitulating to forces that wish to see the shared passion of different countries forced apart by petty regional differences. I could celebrate the US players as well as those in Iran, and I like to think, perhaps overly optimistically, that the player's dedication to the sport better represent aspirations of the people of Iran and the US than all the political posturing we've seen recently.



WORLD CUP MIX





1///De L'Alouette / RJD2 (The song from the great "dream team" commercials.)
2///Pull Up the People / M.I.A.
3///The Dream of Evan and Chan (Lali Puna Remix) / Dntel (Reminds me of overused leg muscles: part sleepy, part jacked.)
4///Eanie Meanie (Tower of Love Mix) / Jim Noir (The other song from the Adidas commercials)
5///La Realite / Amadou et Miriam
6///Hearts of Oak / Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
7///A Deusa Dos Orixas / Clara Nunez (soccer=samba!)
8///I Do Dream You / Jennifer Gentle
9///Zoom / MC Solaar
10///UK Warriors / Roots Manuva
11///Be Quiet, Mt. Heart Attack / Liars (The Liars in Berlin, perhaps perhaps seeing the stadiums vicariously for me.)
12///Copa Italiano / Joey Polpette