Cash Rules Everything Around Queens

Wu Latino “C.R.E.A.M. (Latino Remix)” – These little xeroxed flyers are all over this small stretch of Broadway in Astoria, and as far as I can tell given my walk around the neighborhood and on through Steinway Street, nowhere else. Either the Wu Latinos got carried away and ran out of flyers before making it past their second block, or they targeted this particular area because, um, maybe some high profile radio programmers from Clearchannel live on that block, or at least frequent the Dunkin’ Donuts or the florist between Crescent and 30th Street. (Actually, the most plausible reason I can think of is that there is some kind of rehearsal/studio space on that street, and maybe the Wu Latinos were working there and went on a mini-postering spree after an especially good session.)

Anyway, whether it was their goal or not, they got my attention. I’m a pretty big Wu-Tang Clan fan, so I’m kinda pre-sold on seeing things with the W logo. But Wu Latino? Huh? There’s been Wu-Tang affiliates of various quality (mostly awful, if we’re being honest) for years now, but this is the first time I’ve heard of the Clan licensing out their brand to an entirely different enthnicity. (Maybe this shouldn’t be a shock after that Chappelle’s Show “racial draft” skit with the RZA and the GZA getting traded to the Chinese.) It’s unclear if these guys have any meaningful connection to the actual Wu-Tang Clan, or if they are just canny dudes franchising the name and hoping to piggyback on the Wu’s credibility. Aside from a track featuring Raekwon and this remix of “C.R.E.A.M.,” the Wu Latinos sound almost nothing like the Clan, favoring super-clean reggaeton tracks to anything remotely grimy and bleak. Their version of “C.R.E.A.M.” works, but really how could it not? The track is a stone classic; that piano motif even sounds fantastic as a midi on my cell phone’s ringtone. The music remains exactly the same, and Method Man’s chorus has not been omitted. The Wu Latinos’ rapping sounds fine, though I don’t understand a word they are saying, and it doesn’t hold a candle to the original verses from Raekwon and Inspectah Deck. The idea of Latin hip hop with a Wu aesthetic is appealing, but even when they are jacking their biggest hit’s beat wholesale, the Wu Latinos are still shy of their mark. (Click here for the Wu Latino site.)

Elsewhere: The Fiery Furnaces interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air! Matthew completely nails exactly what it is that is great about his sister’s voice when he is asked about it by Terry Gross.

I’m Not Even Gonna Tell You Twice

Bugz In The Attic “Move Aside” – Maybe I’m misinterpreting the influence, but this certainly sounds as though they were going for a Rich Harrison sort of thing with the drum samples. It’s not nearly as bombastic and overflowing with lust as “Crazy In Love” or “1 Thing” (or DJ Premier’s Harrison-clone “Ain’t No Other Man” with Christina Aguilera), but that’s mainly due to the group’s European influences pulling the track in a tighter, more controlled direction. But close enough is good enough for me, and there’s a charm to this sort of simmering dynamic tension coming up against that kind of drum break. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon UK.)

Edu K “Bundalele Baile Jean” – Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: Edu K does his chanty-rappy thing (which is nearly identical on every track of his that I’ve heard, but I love it every time) over a Baile funk version of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” I am consistently amazed by the mallaebility and shelf life of “Billie Jean,” a song that ought to be boring to everyone but the very young at this point, but it never stops proving itself to be compelling in all its permutations. (Click here to buy it from Man Recordings.)

Put Yourself Down, You Don’t Need Me

Dani Siciliano “Why Can’t I Make You High?” – Mixing sultry vocals, a minimal arrangement, and a strange country/folk-by-way-of-Prince-circa-“Kiss” aesthetic, “Why Can’t I Make You High?” is not far off from KT Tunstall’s excellent hit single “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” (aka that kinda awesome song Katherine McPhee did a few times on American Idol), but there’s a certain slight bitterness to the flavor of this track that I prefer. The chorus is closer to the ground than Tunstall’s composition, and sounds almost like an attempt to find the spot exactly between the hooks of “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” and “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” (Click here for Dani Siciliano’s MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: For the love of God, hurry up and get Casey Dienel’s live-in-session cover of Pavement’s “Cut Your Hair” while you still can – Daytrotter is placing a 1000 download limit on that track. The rest of the session is great too, but there’s no limit on those songs.

This is what I had to say about her version when I saw her play it live a few months ago:

As you can see above, Dienel actually did play a Pavement cover, and it kinda kills me that I can’t share a recording of it with you right now because it’s definitely the best non-instrumental cover of a Pavement song that I’ve ever heard. In some ways, it’s rather similar to that Mark Ronson cover of “Just” – it makes no attempt to ape Malkmus’ miles and miles of style, and simply aims to emphasize the timeless qualities of the song by putting it in the context of a genre that the original was referencing, however indirectly or sideways.

Drugged Out Sexed Up However You Fly

My DJ sets w/ The Creature @ Sapphire NYC 6/15/2006

Set #1: Spank Rock “Sweet Talk” / Vannesshina & Allesandra “Gira” / Christina Aguilera “Ain’t No Other Man” / Junior Senior “Take My Time” / CSS “Alala” / Christopher and Raphael Just featuring Fox N Wolf “Popper” / Goldfrapp “Ride A White Horse” / Christina Milian “So Amazing” / Out Hud “It’s For You” / Gene Serene & John Downfall “U Want Me” / Spektrum “Horny Pony (Ed Laliq’s Dressage Mix)” / Beyonce “Check On It” / Nelly Furtado “Maneater” / Cristina “What’s A Girl To Do?” / Peaches “Two Guys (For Every Girl)” / Andrew WK “Party Hard” / The Knife “We Share Our Mothers’ Health (Trentemoller Mix)”

Set #2: United State of Electronica “Emerald City” / The Pipettes “Pull Shapes” / Los Super Elegantes “Dance” / Marit Bergman vs. Justus Kohncke “Rentcode” / R. Kelly “Ignition (Remix)” / Robyn “Konichiwa Bitches” / Kylie Minogue “Sweet Music” / Basement Jaxx “Cish Cash”

The turnout for this party was kinda modest, but pretty much everyone who came was dancing the entire time, so as far as I’m concerned this was a big super fun success. The other Creature dudes totally brought it all night, especially Alex “Doorknobs” Naidus’ mindblowing all-electro mini-marathon immediately following my first set. If all goes well, we’re going to do this again soonish, and if you’re in NYC you really ought to come out. These people are nuts!

Peaches featuring Beth Ditto “Two Guys (For Every Girl)” – On a new album jam-packed with over-the-top sexual objectification of men, this particular cut is both the most audacious and successful of the bunch, with Peaches and Beth from the Gossip demanding men (straight or otherwise) to make out with each other and get into m/m/f three-ways with every woman in the club. Or is that in the world? It’s probably the latter. Though Fatherfucker was a let down, I’m glad to report that Peaches comes back strong on Impeach My Bush with at least four or five tracks that approach the greatness of “Lovertits” and “Fuck The Pain Away.” (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

Step By Step They Walk Into The Discotheque

My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site. This week: Eagle & Talon, Mr. Lif, and an amazing pre-release jam from Viva Voce.

Annie “The Crush (And The Left Handed RICHARD X mix)” – Though I did immediately like the tune, the original mix of “The Crush” didn’t do too much for me, mainly because I didn’t feel as though I needed Annie to make straight-ahead indie rock records. Let’s be honest – there’s no shortage of rock bands in the world, but there’s only a handful of consistently good-to-great dance pop acts at any given time, and believe me, that’s a frustration I deal with every week doing this site. This mix by And The Left Handed Richard X is more like it, keeping up the spirit of the Anniemal album while doing justice to the song’s twee indie-isms, making the track more like an electro’d up approximation of Darla-ish indiepop rather than a straight-up pastiche. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)

Also: I am DJing tonight with The Creature. There is no cover charge if you mention The Creature at the door. They will be giving out free cans of Sparks (you know, the hipsterish drink that is one part energy drink, one part booze, one part flesh-searing chemicals) from 10-11 PM. The party starts at 10 PM at Sapphire, 249 Eldridge St., between Stanton and Houston. If everything goes according to plan, I will start around 11:30 or so.

Elsewhere: Thom Yorke in conversation with Jonny Greenwood at SF/J.

Whatever Turns You On, Whatever Gets You Off

Radiohead @ Theatre at Madison Square Garden 6/13/2006
You and Whose Army? / The National Anthem / 2 + 2 = 5 / 15 Step / Morning Bell / Arpeggi / Videotape / Kid A / Fake Plastic Trees / Climbing Up The Walls / Nude / Bangers N Mash / Idioteque / There There / Street Spirit (Fade Out) / Bodysnatchers / Lucky // I Might Be Wrong / Down is the New Up / The Bends / Everything In Its Right Place /// House of Cards / How To Disappear Completely

Radiohead “Kid A” (Live in Mansfield, MA 2003)

Radiohead “The Bends” (Live at Earl’s Court, London 2003)

This was my twelfth Radiohead show in ten years, and though I came to the conclusion at the end of their last run at Madison Square Garden in 2003 that every show they did was of relatively equal quality aside from differences in setlist, I do get the feeling that last night’s show was an above average performance. Maybe it’s because it’s been nearly three years, and I’d spent a lot of that time not listening to them. Maybe it’s because I was just super psyched to be there, since I hadn’t been expecting to see the show and lucked into a ticket on Monday. Maybe they just keep getting better and better, which is entirely logical and also a bit terrifying. Lord knows they completely nailed “Kid A” and “The Bends” last night better than on any other performance of either that I’ve seen or heard, and jeezy creezy, I’ve seen them play the latter song in person at least eight times now. The show didn’t include every song I’d been hoping for – I was pulling for “Myxomatosis,” “The Gloaming,” “Just,” and “Planet Telex,” which I haven’t seen them perform since 1997 – but it’s hard to complain about a show that included more than half of Kid A (including the title track, which is my single favorite Radiohead song), plus “Fake Plastic Trees” and “The Bends,” which I might not have included if the setlist were up to me, but felt exactly right at the time. Perhaps on some level the band knew that I (and everyone else in the room) needed to hear “I want to live, breathe, I want to be part of the human race!” and not “everyone is broken, everything is broken” last night.

Some notes on the new songs. I had already heard all of them via crappy lo-fi mp3s of recent shows.

“15 Step” – This song and a couple other new tracks seem to be lifting very subtle elements from old school R&B, which I find very interesting in the context of what they do, and also sort of inevitable given their tastes and skill level. I’d be very surprised if this didn’t make the cut of the eventual seventh album – it’s more or less fully formed, very catchy, and not quite like anything else they’ve done.

“Arpeggi” – Not one of my favorite new tunes, but it’s nice enough. It is just really strange to me that they have a song now that reminds me of a more ethereal Sunny Day Real Estate.

“Videotape” – Certainly the weakest of the new songs performed, and the lowest point of the set. It’s not a bad song, but I hope that it is either revamped or tossed off as a b-side because it’s just a little too dirgey and shapeless for my taste.

“Nude” – Not really a new song at all, of course. This is the song occasionally known by the superior title “(Don’t Get Any) Big Ideas.” It was nice to finally see the band perform the song, and though I quite like the new arrangement, I have to say that I really miss the gorgeous organ part from the version in the Meeting People Is Easy documentary. Hey Radiohead, if you’re going to bring back this one, how about “Big Boots” and “Follow Me Around” while you’re at it?

“Bangers N Mash” – Oh man oh man oh man, I love this song. If you’ve heard a live mp3, you’re just not getting it all, it’s just so much more dynamic and forceful in person and with excellent sound quality. I’d really like for them to write a few more fast, sinister art-punk songs like this.

“Bodysnatchers” – Another very good song, sort of a cousin to “Optimistic” from Kid A, but I get the sense that it would be better if they didn’t seem like they were holding back. My advice to Radiohead: Just keep going with it, bring it up to ten minutes or more. Make it your “Sister Ray.”

“Down Is The New Up” – Oddball Radiohead funk. Terrible title, but what can you do? Very interesting arrangement – Thom beatboxing and playing piano, Jonny Greenwood switching between guitar and a full drum kit, Ed O’Brien singing in his lowest register while Thom sings a high lead. Definitely one of the best of the new tracks, and would probably make for a pretty good album opener.

“House of Cards” – Gorgeous, delicate, romantic. The sexiest song that they’ve ever written, and they don’t try to dodge it, either. The first two lines are “I don’t want to be your friend / I just want to be your lover,” which has got to be one of the most direct couplets Yorke has ever penned. It’s a little banal but absolutely perfect, and a step up from the write-your-own-Radiohead-song mad lib lyrics on most of the other new tunes. Seriously though, this is just an astounding song, and though I already liked it a lot, I don’t think I was ready for just how beautiful it was going to be in live performance.

Also: If you haven’t noticed the banner at the top of the site, you should know that I will be DJing at The Creature party at Sapphire on the Lower East Side tomorrow night. Please come!

How Long Will This Go On?

Luna “Friendly Advice” – In a key scene early in Matthew Buzzell’s documentary about Luna, Tell Me Do You Miss Me, guitarist Sean Eden explains that band leader Dean Wareham is the type who plays it “close to the vest,” which seems to be an accurate way of describing his character, as well as that of his music, and of the film. Much like Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan, Wareham sings with a flat, amiable voice that masks potent emotions in low key erudition and a cool detachment that suggests that he’s somewhat embarassed to be expressing himself at all. Like a lot of the best 90s indie rock, the music navigates the subtleties of repressed emotions, and finds a lot to say about little things. The film approximates the band’s pretty, noodly guitar tones with gorgeous dv footage that makes the most of impressive locations, and finds beauty in mundane environments. The documentary follows the musicians on their final tour, and mainly observes them coming to terms with their time in the band, and the self-concsiousness of knowing that everything is about to end. Wareham isn’t the only member with a reserved demeanor, so it also seems to be about the uncomfortable dynamic of a group of sensible, mature people who all err on the side of passive aggression. The film’s voice-over free narrative keeps up the “close to the vest” theme by refusing to include much in the way of backstory or exposition, many times showing parts of the members’ lives that ought to be explained, but opting instead to let the viewer figure things out for themselves. (Click here to buy it from Rhino.)

They’ll Sell Yr Soul On eBay

Puffy AmiYumi “Radio Tokyo” – I’ve never been a big power ballad kind of guy, but I’m totally helpless to the charms of this track, which is like some kind of monster cooked up by J-Pop scientists working to combine the best bits of David Bowie, Queen, Journey, Chicago, late period Courtney Love and Avril Lavigne in a bid for total worldwide mall domination. I can only hope and pray that they will perform this song when they play their free show in NYC later this summer, and that the legion of tweens who will no doubt be in attendence will learn the words to this song, or at least the chorus. (Click here to buy it from Tofu Records.)

Coin Op “Hey Uri!” – It’s about time someone wrote an absurdly venomous stompy indie punk song putting that fraudulent spoon-bending Uri Gellar motherfucker in his place. Seriously. Fun fact: The song sounds spontaneous and wild, but it is actually years in the making, and clearly well worth the wait. (Click here for Coin-Op’s MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: Absolut Noise interviews The Knife.

Bryan Lee O’Malley‘s Scott Pilgrim series of digest-sized graphic novels have quickly become some of my favorite comics of all time, and that’s saying quite a lot given my lifelong history with the medium. O’Malley’s series is a giddy rush of comedy, romance, and absurd action, with a brilliant high concept — charismatic layabout Scott Pilgrim must defeat his new girlfriend Ramona Flowers’ seven evil ex-boyfriends in order to stay with her — that warps a classic video game convention into an offbeat metaphor about learning how to cope with the romantic past of both your partner and yourself. Though comics are often associated with wish fulfillment, it’s actually quite rare to find many contemporary books (mainstream, indie, or otherwise) that bother with that sort of thing, much less embrace it as O’Malley does in the series. If you don’t find yourself wanting to be Scott Pilgrim (Super cute girls love him! He’s in a band! He’s got cool friends! He’s a hero!), you’ll probably develop a crush on Kim Pine, want a cool roommate like Wallace Wells, or wish that you could have a nemesis half as fabulous as Envy Adams.

In this interview, Bryan Lee O’Malley discusses the origins of the series, his background in music, the potential film adaptation of the comic, and his tendency to conflate video games that he has played with actual lived experience.

Matthew Perpetua: I got into the series very recently and read all three volumes in rapid succession, and the main thing I was thinking after reading them was basically, “Wow, I wish my life was like Scott Pilgrim!” Were you going for a wish fulfillment sort of thing?

Bryan Lee O’Malley: I think so, in some ways. I mean, he’s kind of like sort of a personal wish fulfillment character, at least from when I was that age. I wish I was a little white indie rock kid, that sort of thing. And there’s that sense of being part of a new group of friends, the identification factor, which I guess is probably part of the reason the series is getting popular or whatever.

MP: Has the build-up of popularity been very quick recently?

BLO: It’s probably seemed more sudden than it actually was, since I was cooped up all winter drawing the third book. It seems like just a gradual spread through friends and word of mouth, and also from the other comics creators telling their own fans to pick up my books. It seems to have real pull with the writers and artists and stuff, in and out of comics. Some Daily Show guys emailed me last week saying they loved it, for example.

MP: How long have you been working on this project now?

BLO: Uh, since the beginning of 2004 officially. I had notes and sketches dating back to 2002, but I started really writing and drawing it in 2004.

MP: How did the idea for the series start out?

BLO: I started writing about Scott Pilgrim right after I had a breakup in 2002, and I was living in Toronto and had a gay roommate, and it was just sort of this mopey story without a lot of the fantastical elements. My roommate and I would just ride the bus around and talk about Scott Pilgrim as a sort of alternate version of our lives, and gradually his life got a lot weirder. It was just a sort of mood or feeling, and everything we thought of that fit the mood would go into my Scott Pilgrim notes.

MP: How did you come to include the more fantastical video game elements?

BLO: Well, later that year I started dating an American girl, and that started to solidify things. And… I don’t really know. Around that time I was thinking a lot about my youth, making friends with cool people who had nerdy skeletons in the closet, and I sort of wanted to make a book that would entertain them. And I was thinking about how I have trouble remembering if I did something for real, or if I just did it in a video game, sometimes… especially with like the newer 3D type games. Um, not to say I have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality, I’m not a sociopath, but I have a pretty bad memory.

MP: That’s very funny considering how weird video games can be.

BLO: Well, it happens to me more with the more mundane stuff, like I’m walking and it’s foggy and oh, it reminds me of that time I… no, wait, that was in Final Fantasy or Resident Evil or whatever. And yeah, so I extrapolated that feeling and included stuff like Super Mario and River City Ransom under the umbrella, because they were a huge part of the fabric of my youth, and it makes sense to me that SOMEONE would confuse their life with those games.

Plumtree “Scott Pilgrim (EP Version)” (Out of print! Good luck finding it!)

MP: You named Scott after a song by the band Plumtree, right? Did that song inspire the character and tone of the series, or just the name?

BLO: Plumtree used to be my favourite band, and I always wanted to sort of do a tribute to them in some way. So I thought about their song and, you know, who is this guy Scott Pilgrim anyway, and what’s so great about him? And like I was saying, we were riding the bus and talking about Scott Pilgrim, and a bunch of the crazy stuff we came up with ended up being some of the basis for his character and his sort of worldview.

MP: So I guess your former gay roommate is the basis for Wallace Wells?

BLO: Yeah. The starting point, anyway. The more I write him, the more he becomes his own weird person. And there’s elements of me in there too, just like all the characters, just like most writers I guess. So he’s this weird blend.

MP: Did you map out the entire series from the start?

BLO: Not really. Originally it was just going to be one book, before the seven evil ex-boyfriends even came in, but it grew and grew. The stuff I had originally planned out included a lot of the first three books. I ended up planning out the rest, to some degree, after the movie people sort of made me do it, so they had a basis for the screenplay.

MP: When did the movie people get involved?

BLO: It was pretty quick actually. It was about four months after the first book came out that Edgar Wright read it and the wheels started turning. Universal desperately wants him to do a movie in North America after he’s done with Hot Fuzz, and this one is furthest along because I think they’ve been pushing it. But yeah, it’s been quiet for the past few months, since he’s been shooting. I think I’ll hear more in the next few weeks. I think he’s done, unless they’re going over schedule, which they might be.

MP: So is the idea to do the seven evil ex-boyfriends in one movie? That seems like a lot for one film.

BLO: Yeah, it does, but I think they can probably do it. It’ll be compressed, but what I’ve seen from them so far makes me think they can handle it. It’ll have a

different effect, but it’s coming from the same place.

MP: How did you arrive at the original “seven evil ex-boyfriends” concept? I like that you’re using this video game convention as this sort of weird relationship metaphor.

BLO: I really, really don’t remember. I’m sure I was thinking about shonen manga and video games, and seven just seemed like the appropriate number, and my mind just melded it all into this concept. Yeah, it’s this big elaborate metaphor that I’m desperately trying not to fuck up, but I probably already fucked it up.

MP: Really? How do you think?

BLO: I’m not sure. I don’t want to explain it in case I’m right and the whole world comes crashing down. No, I think the Free Comic Day story was straining the metaphor, was just kind of playing the game instead of really having a lot going on to back it up. I just wanted it to be fun, and I did it in a few days. So yeah. Maybe it’s “non-canon.”

MP: So where did all the Smashing Pumpkins references in the new volume come from?

BLO: They were my other favourite band in high school and early college, so, since I was looking at that period of my life, I figured I would listen to that music again. And the Infinite Sadness is just kind of a jokey play on a Harry Potter type of title. Harry Potter and the Infinite Sadness. And it let me mash my two favourite bands together into one title, incidentally, which I hadn’t even thought about.

MP: You play in a band yourself, right?

BLO: I used to. I moved. I moved like 2000 km away. But other forces broke the band up. The guy, the leader, my friend Joel, he’s in a new band now called Brigitte. They played their first show last week, and I was there, and it was awesome. I think they might catch on.

Brigitte “Bitch Please” (Click here for Brigitte’s MySpace page.)

MP: Are you a bass player, like Scott? I love that Scott is a bassist and not a guitarist or lead singer.

BLO: Yeah, that was kind of based on… I’m shitty at bass, but I got drafted to play bass a few times, at least back in high school. It’s like this even a monkey can play bass thing. So Scott’s like me in that he’s a terrible bassist who kind of fell into it. But to answer your original question, no, I don’t actually play bass. I don’t own a bass. I have a keyboard (a Korg) and an acoustic guitar. I played keys in my Toronto bands. Imperial Otter was the first one, and Honey Dear was the second one. Kupek is my solo stuff.

Kupek “Headless Horseman” (Microphones cover) (Click here to buy it from Radio Maru.)

MP: How long have you been doing Kupek?

BLO: Since about… uh… six years ago. In the summer of 2000, after Plumtree and the Smashing Pumpkins both broke up.

MP: They had to make room in the world for Kupek, I suppose.

BLO: I guess. I mean, it’s only in retrospect that it seems like a catalyzing effect, but I didn’t seriously pick up the guitar until that summer after my two favourite bands called it quits.

MP: What do you think of Billy’s post-Pumpkins stuff?

BLO: Zwan was enjoyable but forgettable, and his recent stuff is more like you WISH you could forget it.

MP: I was a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan as a teenager too, by the way.

BLO: I think we all were. I’m weirded out by people who still list the Pumpkins as their favourite band on MySpace or whatever, though.

MP: Yeah, I think the Pumpkins are a really teen specific thing, and I still love those songs, but with a distance. There was no distance whatsoever when I was 16.

BLO: Yeah, “Soma” was like the beginning and end of everything for a while there.

MP: Oh man, don’t even get me started about “Soma”!

BLO: SIXTEEN ACOUSTIC GUITARS OR WHATEVER! But yeah, move on, you know? Other things have happened in music since 1996…

MP: How is the next volume coming along?

BLO: Oh, it’s not really coming along yet. It has a lot of notes, and most of an outline. I was hoping to start scripting it this week, but I’m under piles and piles of mailorder and outstanding art orders, so I’ll probably start after MoCCA. Which is this weekend. And I’m playing an acoustic set at their afterparty, so I need to practice. I’m a bit rusty.

MP: Do you work out the full script before drawing?

BLO: Yeah, I try to do a full script. Last time I didn’t quite make it to the end of the script, and I think it hurt the story overall. I had some delusions about how I would write the book in sketches and thumbnails, but that just didn’t work for me.

MP: Are you feeling more confident with the art? Reading all three really quickly, I definitely noticed the art and storytelling style getting slicker and more sophisticated.

BLO: Yeah, I definitely have started to feel like I know how to draw. The art is less of a chore now and I’m able to entertain myself.

MP: When do you think volume 4 will be hitting stores?

BLO: I’d say March ’07 at the earliest. I’m trying to give myself a buffer. I want to be well into Vol 5 by the time Volume 4 is out, so that there can be some kind of rhythm to these things. In comics, stuff tends to be in stores a few weeks after it’s off the drawing board, which can be nice, but it’s also a bit weird.

MP: Was there ever any pressure from Oni Press to do the series as regular comic issues rather than as complete graphic novels?

BLO: No, not at all. They were trying to make the shift, and I think Scott Pilgrim helped them along a bit. It certainly didn’t hurt, anyway. It’s doing well in indie terms, which seems like peanuts in mass media terms, but hey.

Bryan Lee O’Malley will have a booth at MoCCA’s Art Festival at the Puck building in NYC this weekend. If you live near NYC, you should go there, say hello to him, and buy his stuff. Otherwise…

Click here to buy Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life (Volume 1)
Click here to buy Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (Volu

me 2)
Click here to buy Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness (Volume 3)

Sweet Dreams Listening To The Radio

My new ASAP column is up, and it includes songs by Excepter, Destroyer, and DAT Politics. The new Excepter track is particularly great, so definitely go get that. I would’ve included it here, but it just made better sense to put it over there this week.

Matthew Friedberger “Up The River” – True to his word, Winter Women is Matthew Friedberger’s version of a breezy summer album. The key word in that sentence is “version” – he’s in full auteur mode at this point, so everything is filtered through his oddball aesthetic. The songs on Winter Women are discrete entities, but flow together like a suite, and I get the sense that there is a narrative here, though I can’t quite discern it without a lyrics sheet. Friedberger’s voice is soft and mumbly throughout the album, which is something of a surprise given how crisp and bold his enunciation on the Fiery Furnaces albums has been. Maybe he was just trying to keep up with Eleanor, or it could be that he’s just trying to suit the songs and the characters. This record lacks the forthrightness of the Furnaces material. Those albums stand up tall, and almost every lyric is a loud declaration. Winter Women slouches, and quietly asks a lot of questions.

As you could have predicted, the album is packed full of stray sounds, but it’s not quite as dense as usual, allowing for a certain lightness in many of the songs that sets them apart from the rest of Friedberger’s discography. However, there are several odd percussive fills that pop up throughout the record, some of which sound like a person entering a room and tripping over a drum kit. The sound of the record is consistently hummable and inviting, but there’s something about it that seems to keep me at arm’s length. Whereas the Furnaces records practically demand my full attention and gain quite a bit from that sort of close listening, Winter Women seems to be best enjoyed as casual background music. There’s not as much to unravel, but there is certainly a lot to digest. The record is packaged with the Holy Ghost Language School LP, and I strongly recommend only trying to get to know one at a time because it was a little too overwhelming for me to handle simultaneously, leading me to overlook several of the songs from the second half of Winter Women for weeks. The album is still growing on me, actually. I didn’t even notice until last night just how gorgeous “Theme From Never Going Home Again” is, and the dramatic arc of the disc is only now becoming apparent to me.

Matthew Friedberger “Seventh Loop Highway” – Holy Ghost Language School is the Rehearsing My Choir to Winter Women‘s Bitter Tea. It’s Friedberger’s second (or first? I’m not 100% clear on the songwriting chronology…) attempt at a story album, and similar to how some instrumentation and musical ideas carry over between RMC and BT, it’s very obvious that HGLS and WW was a twin birth in terms of arrangement and production style. The tone is quite different, though. HGLS is a considerably denser, darker work that is more concerned with telling its story than making it onto your mix cd. Though most of the story on Rehearsing My Choir was carried by the vocals of Eleanor and Olga Sarantos, Matthew’s narration often seems like an afterthought on this record. He relies on the music to set the scene and articulate shifts in mood, and he’s mostly quite successful. The album is like an elaborately crafted multi-room installation, with each track serving less as a chapter in a novel, and more like a distinct area in a panorama. Over the course of the piece, Friedberger touches on a range of motifs knicked from film and television scores, punk rock, funk, video games, and jazz. I find Friedberger’s approximation of jazz piano to be particularly charming, especially when those bits enter the arrangement not as an attempt to impress anyone, but rather to place a scene in a specific context.

At this point in time, I’m not completely sold on the the final third of Holy Ghost Language School. The record loses steam somewhere in the second act, and it never quite recovers. Winter Women has a far better sense of dramatic resolution, which is strange since that album does not seem to be as deliberately narrative in its construction.

Two Very Different Things

Joan As Police Woman “Eternal Flame” – No, sorry, it’s not a Bangles cover. There’s a strange tension in this song – it seems to tip back and forth between serenity and turmoil, leading to a feeling of emotional seasickness. Extending that nautical metaphor just a bit further, the entire composition is anchored in place by these calm, lovely low harmonies that contrast nicely with the pretty but jittery lead vocal. (Click here to buy it from Joan As Police Woman.)

The Long Blondes “Weekend Without Make Up” – This is a very well written song, but it makes me wish that they hadn’t played up the new wave musical signifiers so much, because I feel like the composition is getting lost in a lot of stylization that possibly pegs the band as behind-the-curve retro plunderers. Still, there’s no arguing with the chorus, and the arrangement suits that bit very well. After all, there’s a good chance that they just want you to pogo to it, and if that’s the case, it’s well enough. (Click here to buy it from Record Store UK.)

Elsewhere: Oh my God, what has this bizarre trailer for a new tv show for kids done to my mind??? (Don’t forget to check the mp3s on that page too.)

Give Me Three Wishes

CSS “Alala” – The name stands for Cansei de Ser Sexy, which translates to “tired of being sexy.” And that more or less describes this girl’s vocal style – it’s that blasé cool-chick tone, like Kim Gordon reborn as a Brazilian party girl. It’s the sort of voice that forces the audience to endlessly parse every inflection, trying to figure out where pithiness and sarcasm ends and actual flirtation begins. The track is a total gem, seamlessly blending punk and electro in a way that feels far more organic than most other attempts. It really just sounds like they wouldn’t know how to do it any other way. (Click here for CSS’ official site.)

PdL “Happiness” – Some songs are about bursts of euphoria so exhilirating that you can barely hold yourself together while hearing them, and I’ve posted a lot of those over the past few years. This selection is more about relaxed moments of contentedness, and when your life goes still for a few seconds and you realize “wow, I am soooooo lucky.” Lucky to be alive, lucky to have the life that you live, and in the case of this song, lucky to know a person who can make you so very happy. How happy? Happy enough that the singer is willing to sing an incredibly silly (and sweet!) lyric like “you can be my new recruit for the happy team” without one iota of embarassment. (Click here for PdL’s MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: Maria Tessa Sciarrino never stops being awesome.

I Thank The Lord The Gas Station Lights Were Bright

The Aislers Set “What Fades First (Demo)” – Don’t get me wrong, the whole track is fantastic, but how amazing is that first verse? The shakey reverb on the guitar, the backing vocals that come on like a sudden flash of headlights, the way Amy Linton’s voice gets that chill as she sings about a regrettable encounter in a car with a grabby dude? Perfect, perfect, perfect. If this is a taste of things to come for the Aislers Set, I am quite eager to hear their next album. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: In case you missed it, I filed a report for ASAP about a listening party for Thom Yorke’s new album over the weekend.

Fluxblog Interview With Bryan Charles!

Reading Bryan Charles‘ Grab On To Me Tightly As If I Knew The Way is like falling through a time warp back to 1992. Without seeming forced or remotely kitschy, he evokes minute details of life in the early 90s from the perspective of an aimless seventeen year old recent high school graduate in Kalamazoo, Michigan with poignancy, wit, and an unsentimental sort of poetry. It’s a remarkably confident debut novel, and one of my favorite fictional works from the year thus far. In this interview, we talk a bit about the book, his writing process, the appeal of the ’90s, and our favorite rock band, Pavement.

Matthew Perpetua: Is this your first novel? It’s know that it is your first published book, but is the first book you’ve completed?

Bryan Charles: Yeah, this is my first novel, the first book I ever tried to write. I never attempted to write anything longer than about six thousand words, that’s about longish short-story length, before that. And as far as novels go, Grab isn’t a particularly long one.

MP: How long were the characters and story ideas kicking around in your head before you got to actually write the book?

BC: Quite a while, actually. In the case of Helene, the main female character, as far back as the summer of 1992, which is when a meeting very much like the one in the early pages of the book took place. I was seventeen, I had just graduated high school and I went to band practice, where I happened to meet a girl with scars on her arms who was reading Naked Lunch and told me it was her Bible. Something about that meeting I never forgot, always kind of drifted back to, and in about 1998, I wrote a story about the encounter called “Scars.” It was very bare bones, just a few pages; neither of the characters even had names at that point. It was just a guy and a girl talking. Much later, in the summer of 2001, after having given that short piece more thought, I went back to it and expanded it and it blew up to about twenty pages. That’s when the characters of Vim and Helene really took shape. I was in grad school at the time and a teacher of mine said she really liked the characters and the voice of the story and encouraged me to try and take them further, and so I did.

MP: I was wondering how much of Helene was based on fact, because so much of that character is so well observed and specific, and she reminded me of two or three people I’ve actually known. How much of Vim is autobiographical for you?

BC: Well, Vim’s story is essentially my own and the book’s main plot points (inasmuch as there actually is a plot) are certainly true. My parents divorced when I was quite young and I grew up and got very into music and played in bands and was hung up a lot of the time on unattainable girls, etc. Beyond that, I invented many of the specific situations and various other peripheral characters. It’s funny you say that about Helene because she’s actually a composite of two or three people that I’ve known over the years. No one like that really existed for me at that time in my life, at least in the way that it’s described in the book.

MP: Was there any reason aside from actually growing up in the early 90s and the book being semi-autobiographical that the story takes place in that time? Your presentation of that era is pretty key to the character of the story, and you’re evoking a lot of concrete details that are easy to forget when you think of the period now, but really put you back in time when you read it. Are you nostalgic about the era?

BC: You know, I am farily nostalgic for that era. And maybe that’s typical, maybe it just goes with getting a little older and looking back and feeling a kind of romanticized fondness for a certain time, like someone who was my age in the mid-70s looking back on the 60s or something. But it really does feel to me like that was a special time, in a lot of ways perhaps more magical than much of what came after it, musically, culturally, politically, everything. There’s a reason Slanted and Enchanted still gets heavy play on my stereo, and it’s not because I’m so out of touch.

Pavement “Angel Carver Blues/Mellow Jazz Docent (Live)” (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

MP: You named the book after a Pavement lyric, right? From “Angel Carver Blues/Mellow Jazz Docent.” Was there any particular reason for that?

BC: Well, Pavement is my all-time favorite band in the history of music. And I’ve just always loved that line. For a while–for two whole years, actually–the book had a different title. It was called Stay Cool Forever. And as time wore on and I got deeper into the book and closer to the end and I saw how things were going to go down, Stay Cool Forever seemed somehow too jokey, too sarcastic. So I axed it and almost immediately that Pavement line came into my head and seemed to evoke precisely the mood I was going for in the book.

Dinosaur Jr. “Pond Song” (Click here to buy it from Merge Records.)

MP: Pavement doesn’t actually seem to get mentioned in the book nearly as much as Dinosaur Jr., who you have Vim openly immitating. Is that another big band for you, or did it just make more sense for that to be Vim’s thing?

BC: Dinosaur Jr. was a huge band for me then. I mean, I was obsessed. And the only reason Pavement didn’t get more play in the book is because I was trying to stay strictly true to the chronology, and I didn’t actually get into them until my freshman year of college, which would have been 92/93. I did eventually become fully obsessed with Pavement and I suppose the reason that love didn’t fade like with Dinosaur Jr.–or even Nirvana, for that matter–is because there’s more to work with in those songs, I think, there are more emotional dynamics. Dinosaur Jr. or Nirvana are terrific visceral experiences but Pavement–the whole Stephen Malkmus catalog, really–taps into something else.

MP: I agree. I’m constantly amazed by how much new I find in Pavement songs that I’ve known since I was 14, and how I’m either still getting the same thing out of them as I did when I first heard them (like, say, “Raft” and “Easily Fooled” which I just discovered are still wonderful ‘I’ve got a crush’ songs in spite of some pretty weird lyrics), or songs I wasn’t way into then have this whole new life for me now that I’m older, like with “Father To A Sister of Thought” or “We Dance.”

How much influence have musicians like Malkmus had on your writing style? I can detect a certain flair for unexpected language and similes.

BC: That’s a good

question and I’m sure the influence is there. I mean, in terms of sheer language I do like to keep things either charged-up or slightly off-kilter or just interesting in some way, as interesting as I can make it. I had one early review of the book, a not particularly complimentary review, say that I obviously spent a lot of time fussing around with my prose. Which seems to me to be the only way to do it. Because I’m very much against the novel as merely a vessel for information, some kind of perfectly true, perfectly bland realistic experience. As far as the Malkmus influence, it’s strange and maybe has worked on me in ways I don’t even realize. One of my favorite periods in literature is the New York School in the 50s, poets like Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, whom I particularly like, to the extent that I’d call him one of my favorite poets. Now, I got into Ashbery in an undergrad workshop. We weren’t talking too much indie rock there. And years later I read some article about Stephen Malkmus and one of the things he mentions is an interest in John Ashbery. So everything feeds off everything else, I guess.

MP: You mentioned that you’ve been in bands, and you’ve written music. How is the experience of writing prose different for you? Were there ever points in writing the book where you felt like “oh man, this feeling would be so much easier to express with a guitar”?

BC: Oh yeah, all the time. Because there are places that music can reach that literature will simply never be able to. I love Jimi Hendrix, he’s one of my favorites, and I will never, ever find the feeling I get listening to “Little Wing” in some book. As far as comfort level goes, I’m more comfortable with prose these days, but only because I feel out of practice with songwriting. I still play guitar pretty much every day but not really to write anything and songwriting is like any kind of writing, you’ve got to do it a lot to get good. That said, there are times even now that I wish I could throw the draft of the novel I’ve been working on out the window and pick up my guitar and try and write something really good that, at the very most, stretching my abilities to their very limits, would take up no more than four minutes of your time.

“All the Young Hessians” is a song I wrote with a band I was in called So This is Outer Space and I included in the book sort of for my and my bandmates’ amusement, but also because I felt at the time that it was a pretty good effort, a pretty solid three-to-four-minute pop song. Now, obviously, I have some issues with it, the biggest one being my voice, which I’ve never been totally comfortable with.

The back story here is that I’d never planned on singing anything. I learned how to play guitar and thought I’d try and join a band and then finally, my senior year of high school, a guy came up to me and asked if I knew how to play the Dinosaur Jr version of “Just Like Heaven.” I told him I did and he asked if I’d come over and show the guys in his band how to play it, since they were thinking of covering it. So I did, I went and showed them. But then none of those guys wanted to sing it so they asked if I’d do that too. I said okay and thought it’d be just a one-shot deal but that’s how I joined the band that became the basis for the Judy Lumpers.

But Vim was supposed to be fumbling his way toward some more accomplished songwriting and that’s what I always thought “Hessians” represented for me, a leap of some kind. Maybe not a huge one, but a leap. Obviously there’s a heavy Weezer influence. It was eight years ago now so bear that in mind.

MP: Are you working on another novel now?

BC: Yeah, I’ve been working on a new novel for about the last seven months. And I’d been thinking about it and making notes for about six months before that. Writing Grab felt at times pretty anxious and aimless and so far this new project is a much more focused, slightly easier effort. The key word being “slightly.”

MP: Is it odd to have to revisit this book so much now that it’s actually coming out and you have to promote it? I’ve always wondered what it must be like for artists who have to go out and work a book or an album or a movie when they’re invested in another project.

BC: It’s very odd. I finished this book in August of 2004 and I’d been hammering away at it for three years, through what felt like twenty different incarnations of my emotional self, to put it in slightly new-agey terms. There was a period during the copyediting process when I never wanted to lay eyes on it again. But it gets fun again and you get jazzed about certain things like when the galleys come in and then you finally see the finished book and realize that other people being will be seeing it with new eyes, they’ll be approaching it with a new energy, and I’ve tried to tap into that.

MP: Ha, and then you’ll have to go through an even weirder process if it gets turned into a movie! Have you thought about how the book would translate as a movie? It’s definitely not the sort of book that seems like a modified screenplay. So much of the appeal is based on an interior monologue that’s pretty much unfilmable, but I can definitely see someone wanting to adapt it.

BC: Just after it sold, about a year ago now, there was a flurry of interest from film people. It was all very abstract. I never knew exactly who these people where or how they found out about my book, but it fizzled after a pretty intense two weeks or so. Which is just as well, to be honest with you, because all that stuff sent me into tailspins of anxiety–selling the book and hearing from my agent about movie people–and I was constantly sweating and borderline hyperventilating. But I’d be flat-out lying if I said I never thought about how the book would look as a movie or didn’t have daydreams about who would be on the soundtrack. I agree with you that parts of it might be trickier to film, but if someone wanted to try I’d be pretty ecstatic.

MP: It’s odd how film adaptation is this major (and sometimes strangely legitimizing) thing for people in books, whereas it’s really hard to imagine anyone who works in music or fine art thinking about their work being a source material for a completely different artform that’s higher up in a hierarchy of public interest and profitability.

BC: I seem to remember Paul Thomas Anderson talking about how he wrote Magnolia to be a kind of visual Aimee Mann mixtape, something about how he listened to her music and wrote that movie. And her stock shot through the roof when that movie came out and she did achieve a kind of “legitmacy” as a songwriter that she hadn’t had before that. And that’s certainly true in the book world, as you point out. It’s like instant cred and if you’re lucky, a lot of dough. I was working in this office when I sold my book and, you know, some people there were pretty excited. “Oh, congratulations, that’s great.” But when I told them about movie people calling they were instantly like, “Wow, this is it, you’re going to be famous. Please remember the little people.” Their interest jumped to a whole other level. But here I am, still unfamous, and I remember their names.

NYC readers should note that Bryan Charles will be reading selections from the book at the The Reader’s Room on Monday, June 12, 7 PM @ Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction, Second Floor 34 Avenue A, between 2nd & 3rd Streets.

Please Don’t Shake Me

This week’s Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site. This week, all three songs have never been featured here before, so if you’re a Fluxblog regular you really ought to go check this one out.

Brightblack Morning Light “All We Have Broken Shines” – This is song is like some kind of full body swoon. It’s as though the tune just snips the cord of your mind so it floats away from your body like a balloon. The vocals seem to have a light gravitational pull, and the gentle keyboards feel like the only thing tethering you to waking life. It’s like late period Yo La Tengo without so many neuroses, or Cat Power on a melted cassette. You might not want to play this while driving, especially if you’ve just taken some medication. (Click here for Brightblack Morning Light’s page on the Matador Records site.)

Elsewhere: I have no way of linking directly to it, but I recently wrote an entry on Urge’s Pop Informer about Christina Milian’s “So Amazing.” (The song, not the album.) My review is just okay, but the song is fantastic, and I highly recommend it. Go get it, seriously.

Like A Record Broke: What If What If What If

PlanningToRock “I Wanna Bite Ya” – New love can be a very strange and bewildering thing, and as a result, you can find yourself in a predicament much like the one in this song. Namely, confusing lust with physical hunger, and sex with cannibalism. The song keeps up a smirking flirtation while clearly overwhelmed by a tidal wave of carnal urges and mixed emotions, but every “what happens if?” seems to signify a heady rush of possibilities rather than a crippling paranoia. Serving suggestion: On a playlist or cd with Fox’s “Sssingle Bed,” Spektrum’s “Horny Pony,” Macy Gray’s “Harry,” Goldfrapp’s “Ride A White Horse,” and a nice red wine. (Click here to buy it from Chicks On Speed Records.)

The Evening Episode “Backstroke” – My, this is a sweaty little song, isn’t it? Not just in terms of the lyrics, which scan like a young woman attempting to write a sex poem in Lee Ranaldo’s voice, but in how the music actually feels slicked up and humid. The vocal delivery is right on the mark, building up narrative anticipation along with the accompaniment until it breaks loose like a thunderstorm on a summer afternoon. Also: This is probably the sexiest song I’ve ever heard that includes the phrase “swimming like an otter.” (Click here to pre-order it from Slowdance.)

I’ll Never Learn To Say Goodbye

My Robot Friend “One More Try” – I tried and just could not bring myself to get into Antony and the Johnsons, but as it turns out, it probably wasn’t Antony Hegarty’s weird Aaron Neville-with-a-sinus-infection voice that was getting in the way of my enjoyment of their records. Unsurprisingly, Hegarty is a perfect fit for torch-song disco, hamming it up like Marc Almond or Andy Bell on a song that sort of resembles Annie Lennox’s brilliant “Little Bird” with all the difficult-to-sing parts removed. This is excellent stuff. More please! (Click here to buy it from Bleep.)

Clipse “Re-Up Anthem (Nick Catchdubs Remix)” – The Eric Clapton sample is a bit on-the-nose (ha, not a pun – that’d be up-the-nose, right?), but Nick Catchdubs works it nicely, serving the rap well with a groove that makes the vocals pop a bit more than on the original mix. (Click here to buy it from DJ Benzi.)

Elsewhere: Marathon Packs on the inexplicable bi-curiosity of the Miracles on the obscure and unintentionally hilarious gem “Ain’t Nobody Straight In L.A.”

And: The first movie review of the summer is up on The Movie Binge, where myself and five other contributors will be reviewing (sometimes as a group, sometimes on our own) every single movie coming out in America between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The first film is, of course, X-Men: The Last Stand, and it’s a tag team effort featuring almost all of us, plus a trivia contest with a cool prize if you’re into video games. I stand by my review of the film, but I admit that it is not quite as sharp as what Todd has to say over on The Face Knife.

Fluxblog Interview With Andrew Beaujon!

I recently read Andrew Beaujon‘s Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside The Phenomenon of Christian Rock on the glowing recommendation of a friend who grew up as part of that scene. It’s a fantastic book, especially for a reader such as myself who had only a passing knowledge of the music as I started in on the first chapter. I liken the experience to when I bought the Spin Alternative Music Record Guide when I was a young teenager – suddenly there was another canon to explore from yet another parallel musical universe. In addition to making artists like Pedro The Lion who I’d barely given much thought seem utterly fascinating, Beaujon approaches Christian culture with a sensitivity and curiosity that is quite rare for a secular music writer without sacrificing his critical judgement. I recently caught up with Mr. Beaujon to discuss his book, and share some songs by artists featured in its pages.

Matthew Perpetua: As an outsider to the world of Christian music, how did you come to write a book about it?

Andrew Beaujon: Well, it started with a conversation. My friend Jim Coe had just graduated from seminary in Richmond, and we were talking over dinner about his Christian-rock past. I talked to more friends about it, and I found out it was a really common experience for a lot of them – getting really into Jesus as a teenager, attending a festival or two, and then usually getting out of it during college. Jim mentioned that the Cornerstone Festival was a big one, so I pitched a story to the Washington Post about it, and they liked the idea. And that’s really how it started. While I was prepping for the article, I couldn’t find anything written about Christian rock that wasn’t by Christians who loved Christian rock or Christians who loathed it. And being the enterprising sort….

MP: Was there much written about Christian music by non-Christians?

AB: Nothing I could find. The odd sneering article taking that “Planet America” tone, you know what I mean?

MP: Reading the book, I kept running into mentions of acts that I had no idea were Christian. I did not realize how many of the promos I’ve been sent over the past two years of so had been Christian bands. I’ve definitely written about a fair few bands without knowing that was part of their past. It’s become amazingly mainstream in the last five years, was that part of the interest?

AB: Definitely. I had a similar experience when I was doing a piece on P.O.D. for Spin. I guess I knew they were Christians, but I’d never really given it much thought. But when you look at the numbers of Evangelicals in America, it’s really striking how many people have this cultural background.

MP: Was Pedro The Lion at that first Cornerstone Festival you attended?

AB: Yeah. Bazan was drunk as a skunk.

MP: Were you familiar with Pedro before that show?

AB: Not really. I think the beard kept me away! You know, you’re sorting through promos, you see facial hair…

MP: I don’t have any idea what David Bazan looks like, actually. I just remember Pedro The Lion being on some decidedly secular mixtapes that I got from a friend back around 1999.

AB: He’s interesting, because he does what a lot of Christian artists wish they could. He supports himself on the secular scene; he only does a couple Christian events a year, and I think he does them to mess with people. Not in a mean way — I think he genuinely wants to shake the foundations of Christian kids’ faith, to get them away from the literal take on the Bible.

MP: Do you think he would be able to work so freely outside of the Christian scene if he didn’t have so many philosophical differences with the Evangelical movement? Or maybe not able so much as eager and willing.

AB: I dunno. I mean, it doesn’t seem to hurt mainstream alternative acts, but on an indie level? I think those kids like their religion ironic.

MP: How much involvement have the Danielson Famile or Sufjan Stevens had in the Christian scene relative to Bazan?

AB: Danielson has played Cornerstone. Dunno about Stevens. I saw both at a conference about faith and music. I think Stevens is pretty uncomfortable with that whole scene, but he went to a Christian college, and I’ll bet he knows a lot about it. Bazan is like an alien.

MP: How so?

AB: In that he has almost no grounding in pop culture, and you don’t have to have grown up Evangelical to like his music. One time we were walking through a parking lot, and someone’s car alarm was going off, and I mentioned to him that it sounded like the start of Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom.” He’d never heard the song.

MP: Is there any particular song by Bazan that you find especially interesting or moving?

AB: I really like “Foregone Conclusions.”

Pedro The Lion “Forgone Conclusions” (Click here to buy it from Insound)

MP: If I recall, that’s the song with swearing that the Cornerstone people had been freaking out about?

AB: Yeah, that’s the one.

MP: What’s going on in that song lyrically?

AB: Well, it starts out “I don’t want to believe that all of the above is true.” It’s about confronting absolute certainty. Christians are obsessed with absolute truth.

MP: How did you come to discover Larry Norman?

AB: It was just part of the research. He’s such a big part of Christian music history.

MP: As of right now, I’ve only heard “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” which is a pretty amazing song. Is that representative of his catalog?

Larry Norman “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” (Click here to buy it from Cross Rhythms.)

< span style="font-family:arial;">AB: Kiiiinda. Some of the stuff is great. A lot of it is really average rock music, but there’s always his crazy voice and the hectoring lyrics. It’s sort of like hearing Pat Buchanan front an acid-rock band.

MP: He’s become something of an outsider over time, is that right?

AB: Yeah, as I understand it he’s pretty difficult to work with. He really dislikes the Christian music industry, and I get the impression the feeling is mutual. A couple people told me off the record that he’s somewhat shunned.

MP: What tends to be the breakdown in the denominations of Christian acts? Are they primarily Evangelical?

AB: Yeah, I think it’s pretty rare to have, say, Episcopalians doing Christian rock. That said, Sixpence None the Richer are Episcopalians. But in mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, I don’t think you’ve got the same orientation toward end times. American Christians, especially, are oriented toward getting their spiritual houses in order before the world comes to an end, and people who feel that way tend to associate mostly with one another.

MP: So is this the prime market for “worship music”?

AB: No, those are different markets. Worship music is pretty much strictly marketed as a way to “do church.” Most Christian rock is a lifestyle accessory.

MP: For people who’ve never heard worship music, how would you describe it?

AB: The best description I have is that it’s rock music for church.

MP: As in, actual services.

AB: Yeah. A lot of it sounds like adult contemporary. On Wednesday nights, a lot of American churches have “worship services.”

MP: I appreciate the way that you describe in the book trying to enjoy worship music, and largely failing. But you did find some songs that you eventually liked, right?

AB: Yeah, and I really like David Crowder Band a lot.

MP: That’s the one you compared to Dave Matthews?

AB: I like Dave Matthews, though. I have terrible taste! Crowder’s also pretty influenced by Radiohead, Bjork, that sort of thing.

MP: Which is also the case for Mute Math, right?

AB: Yeah, definitely.

Mute Math “Control” (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

MP: Mute Math are one of the bands that I had the promo, and just had no idea about their Christian roots.

AB: Did you hear they’re suing Warners?

MP: Really? What is the suit about?

AB: They’re shocked, shocked that they’re being marketed as a Christian rock act. I mean, come on, they’re on Word!

MP: Why do you think they are so paranoid? I mean, at this point in time, it doesn’t seem to hurt your chances of doing well in indie or mainstream rock, whether you’re Sufjan Stevens or Switchfoot.

AB: I agree. I think Mute Math don’t want people to think they’re lame. You know, it is pretty serious. Very few acts can survive the Christian rock label.

MP: It seems like the people who do, it’s mostly because they are obscuring it as much as they can. Like your friend, I was totally amazed to learn that Underoath was a Christian band.

AB: The interesting thing about that band is they don’t downplay their Christianity. When I asked them about it they were like, “Heck yeah, we’re a Christian band!”

MP: Do you think that if U2 were coming up now, they would have a better chance of being embraced as a Christian act? I mean, let’s say that All That You Can’t Leave Behind was their first album.

AB: I don’t think so, because I don’t think U2 make the same mistakes Christian bands do. They are who they are.

MP: The smoking and drinking and swearing taboo is that strong?

AB: Well, definitely that, but I think it’s more that they sing about doubt. Doubt is not kosher.

MP: Well, isn’t that the same for Pedro The Lion?

AB: I think he gets grandfathered in! He’s sort of the house cynic. You know, the guy at work who’s like, “This place sucks” and never gets fired?

MP: There also seems to be a general unease about European Christianity among Evangelicals, which I was aware of, but have never really given much thought.

AB: Well that’s exactly the difference between U2 and Pedro, in terms of the Evangelicals’ acceptance. Bazan grew up in Evangelical Christianity in America. He knows the language.

MP: Do you think the Christian record industry will ever see itself as a mainstream part of the music world? Or would that have to entail the obviously secular acts vacating the general market?

AB: I think there’s probably going to be a lot more middle ground. I think Underoath are probably the model.

MP: How so?

AB: They’re unabashedly Christian, but they don’t only court Christians.

MP: Why them, and not, say, Switchfoot?

AB: Well, I think the trouble with Switchfoot is exactly why they’ll never be U2. They try to relate to two different groups of people at the same time through lyrics that could be taken one way or another. They’ll try to have choruses that mean one thing to Christians and another to alt-rock consumers.

MP: How obviously Christian are the lyrics of Underoath’s songs?

AB: I don’t know, I can’t understand them with all that screaming! They’re pretty emo. I think their music is more informed by faith than focused through it.

MP: I suppose that in terms of the general market, having barely discernable lyrics that are quite open about faith is roughly the same thing as having lyrics about faith that are vague to the point of
seeming like they are about something else entirely.

AB: You may well be correct!

MP: The Evangelical population is constantly growing, right? To a certain point, the mainstreaming of Christian pop culture is inevitable.

AB: At a certain point, you have to wonder which is the outside culture. I mean, I think it’s a lot more normal to grow up Evangelical than to grow up in New York!

MP: In terms of statistics in America, definitely. I grew up in the suburbs of New York City, so there were always religious people, obviously, but it’s just nothing like the Evangelical culture. It seems that even religious Catholics, Jews, and Protestants in the northeast tend to have some kind of divide in their lives between their cultural consumption, identity, and their chuch activities. The church is a lot more peripheral to social activity. It’s somewhat hard for me to relate to growing up in a place where the church was the main hub of social activity for people other than old ladies.

AB: Well, that’s the divide. When I was pitching this book, a lot of publishers (in New York, natch) were like, “Why would anyone want to read about this?” And then the election of 2004 happened.

MP: Is the assumption that people only want to read about their own lives?

AB: I think it’s more insidious than that. I mean, I get probably two or three anti-Bush books a week which are really anti-middle America books in a lot of ways. The subtext always seems to be “what a bunch of rubes these people outside the cities are, how could anyone with any brains vote for Bush/be a Christian/etc., etc,. etc.”

MP: Right. In fairness, it seems that people in “Middle America” are often equally dismissive of the Blue State people.

AB: Agreed. My feeling is, though, that if you can’t understand where people are coming from, you can’t find any middle ground.

Rating: Awesome

The new Hit Refresh column is up, featuring songs by Ethan Lipton, Tiger Tunes, and thanks to Said The Gramophone, the Rappers Delight Club.

Prototypes “Je Ne Te Connais Pas” – My French is horrible, so I only comprehend bits and pieces of this, but it doesn’t matter. Today’s the sort of day when I need something that sounds really upbeat and vaguely badass and sorta triumphant, but I can’t be bothered with lyrics, because a lot of the time, words stimulate thoughts that get in the way of feeling. I really don’t feel much like thinking today. (Click here for the Prototypes’ MySpace page.)

For The Sake Of Ideals

Johnny Boy “War On Want” – I shouldn’t be so concerned with what other people think of records that I love, but I can’t help it – it just breaks my heart to see this Johnny Boy album get bad reviews, especially when they seem to miss the appeal of the record completely. I quite like Rob Mitchum personally, and he’s written some incredibly sharp and thoughtful reviews for Pitchfork over the past few years, but his review is particularly egregious. He was judging the album against The Go Team and USE, which is just all wrong. There’s definitely a few songs that could fit under the “indie dance” banner, but that’s not what the record is overall.

The album is essentially a pastiche of British pop from the past ten years, cutting and pasting bits from britpop, UK indie, and chart pop for specific ends. On one level, Johnny Boy are obviously just very big pop fans with a knack for songwriting and arrangement, and on another, they are intentionally detourning the signifiers of recent British pop with their sloganeering. I think that some of it is about setting a time and a place, but the styles they mimic are not accidental. They want the heady rush of impossibly anthemic choruses, and song structures that reach for the heavens while their feet stuck in Glastonbury mud. They steal the menace from late period Pulp, the spiteful grandeur of Manic Street Preachers, and appropriate the manic blitz of Girls Aloud. “War On Want” echoes The Verve at their soul-searing best with a track that sounds epic but feels entirely personal. Every rejection builds until the singer wants to completely negate herself, and as she comes up to that precipice, the bottom drops out beneath her. It’s desperate and angry, and strangely, very sexy. I don’t know if you’ve had moments in your life like this song, but I certainly have. It’s the sound of idealism getting swallowed by frustration, and resentment over one’s own perceived powerlessness brewing into full-on self-loathing. No, it’s not that fun, but it’s not really meant to be. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)