music
Best Of The Decade; or, The Imperfect Transition
by Josh K-sky on Mar.05, 2010, under music
Over at Come In Threes, America’s Favorite Kiwi B-Diddy Disco passed on a request from the Dan Schwartz Blog for contributors’ favorite albums of the decade.
I peered into my iTunes stats, wandered over to my CD shelves in the other room, and put together this list:
Good Christmas Albums
by Josh K-sky on Dec.07, 2009, under music
Christmas Songs by Diana Krall. Her interpretation of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, no matter how sultry it gets, rises and falls on the brittle truth in the song: Next year our troubles will be miles away, but we can hardly think about anything else tonight.
The Raveonettes released Wishing You A Rave Christmas this time last year. I heard Come On Santa last year along with their The Christmas Song, but the one that’s really got me is the Phil Spector classic Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), also done by Death Cab for Cutie.
Low’s Christmas album turns 10 years old this year. Like all things Low, it drowns in slow sadness here and there, but Just Like Christmas is a fantastic track — a jingle bell Scandinavian road movie that clips along on big drums and seasonal warmth with just a hint of melancholy.
Glee Episode 7: “Throwdown”
by Josh K-sky on Nov.28, 2009, under music, television
I’m still getting caught up on Glee. Episode 7, while entertaining enough, has a number of flaws that highlight what the show does so well.
1: You can have too much of a good thing. Jane Lynch is one of the best things about the show. But her over-the-top villainy plays better as a force of nature than in sustained interactions with other characters. An episode like Preggers, where the Glee club’s success threatens Sue’s television perch, uses her centrally without overdoing it, but Throwdown puts her and Mr. Shuster in continuous battle, which taxes the necessary suspension of disbelief. In general, the adult world outside of Will Shuster is so absurd that it needs to be secondary to the fortunes of the Glee club, and the show works best when it uses the adult world as the B plot or makes Will overwhelmingly central.
2. Narrow your focus. Sue’s exploitation of the minority students’ alienation was tonally inconsistent. The satire of “minority status” was too absurd in its broadness to be pointed, and came off as mushy and hesitant. Glee hasn’t entirely found its voice with regards to satire; this is most clearly found in the attempts to soften Terri even as she moves forward her fabricated pregnancy and baby-switching plot. With Terri, I’m glad to see that the show doesn’t want to treat her as an outright villain, unsympathetically desperate in her baby-madness; with a one-episode theme, however, it’s better to stake out your target more clearly.
2. Glee it up. Too many of the songs in this episode were solo numbers with only incidental choral touches. Consider “Hate On Me”:
There’s no doubt that Amber Riley’s Mercedes can deliver the goods, but solo performances weaken the show. We’ve already seen her do “Bust Your Windows” on her own. The show does a good job of pairing pop songs with the characters’ emotional states, but it only soars when they get their peers to join them in their heightened, musical state. To me, that’s the central proposition of Glee, the truth of which Rachel tries to persuade Quinn in this episode: we all know how much it hurts; you’re not alone.
Things That Look Like Other Things III
by Josh K-sky on Nov.02, 2009, under music
Actually, this will be a thing that sounds like a thing.
Thank you for joining us for Lady Gaga day on Joshua Malbin dot com.
Download a Philip Glass sampler for free on Amazon.
This Must Be The Place
by Josh K-sky on Oct.30, 2009, under Movies, music
I’ve been watching the video for Miles Fisher’s cover of Talking Heads’ 1983 song This Must Be The Place:
In the video, Fisher plays Patrick Bateman and restages several scenes from American Psycho. (Fisher also does a mean Tom Cruise and appeared as Paul Kinsey’s Princeton classmate and dope dealer in Mad Men.) The prostitute sequence in American Psycho was originally set to Phil Collins’ Sussudio (1985); I don’t think Fisher’s use of American Psycho to hold his song is arbitrary.
Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb – born with a weak heart
I guess I must be having fun
I saw American Psycho in the theatre in 2000, when it came out. It resonated with me deeply, not so much for the yuppie satire or the narratively suspect rampage of misogynistic violence, but for this seeming truth: this was the story of a man who hates his job. His life, really, but it’s life in an all-encompassing job, a job of a life.
To me, the song, sung from alienation yearning towards warm oblivion, feels exactly like what Bateman’s character seemed to me to feel. Who do I have to murder to get fired around here?
Miles Fisher EP for free download at Amie Street. The other songs are good too.
UPDATE: I should note that I found this via Jim Emerson, who has other connections to make.
Hip-Hop Is Long Dead
by Joshua Malbin on Oct.25, 2009, under music
The stodgiest magazine in America has declared hip-hop dead. Therefore, it died many years ago. QED.
Come In Threes (Ceremonial Pop edition)
by Josh K-sky on Sep.08, 2009, under music
Come In Threes is B-Diddy’s group MP3 blog for trios of related songs. While the copy asks for “the songs you can’t get out of your head”, my entry is more of a convergence — three songs with something in common that’s otherwise rare in pop music.
UPDATE: Turns out it’s a private blog. As Groucho Marx’s unfunny bizarro-universe counterpart said, I would prefer not to know I was a member of a club that would have me. Here’s my post, anyway:
The infantry stands, and holds out its hands. Bells are going to ring. Birds are going to sing! And all the people from the village will be there to congratulate us.
Pop music creates community through mass intimacy: to everyone, the same private feeling behind her own closed door. It’s no wonder that there aren’t more songs about grand public moments. Here are three.
Pencil Rain – They Might Be Giants
A Wedding in Cherokee County – Randy Newman
Our houses will crumble, the city will fall. The thunderous clatter of splintering wood and lives that are claimed. Why must everybody laugh at my mighty sword?
All songs MP3@254kbps.
Honestly, I’m not entirely satisfied with the Randy Newman. Have you got a better one?