Does it Rock: Lorde, "Royals"

While Lorde's debut hit single may not, strictly speaking, be my thing, I respect it. It's a concerted effort to do and be different, and to make something good and distinct. It follows along the thread of recent years that saw Florence and Lana del Rey emerge, proving the market for female singers who succeed purely on vocal talent and songcraft, without as much fidelity to traditional instrumentation as an Amy Winehouse or Adele. (The threads are related but different.)

The song was just on the brink of being done for me, when something odd happened. I heard it out in the world. I was sitting in a waiting room, with the muffled sound of a Top 40 radio station playing elsewhere in the building. I was hearing some pop song or other - I think it was the one Ellie Goulding did with Calvin Harris but I'm not sure. I think Ellie's got a fine voice, but that song is not much for me. And then this one came on after it and I felt myself nodding my head... yes. It had gotten into my skin to where I could go without hearing it again ever and be very happy, but to hear it out there in the world (as opposed to at work, where it plays every 6 hours on schedule) was so palate-cleansing.

That's when I realized the value of songs like these, songs that are clearly different from run-of-the-mill pop songs, but become grating after a while anyway. At the very least, they break that monotony, and they sound way better because of it. I will never reach for Lorde over the new Arcade Fire album, but waiting to go into an office, amongst a string of otherwise undistinguished tunes, it's a welcome respite.

Metric, "Wanderlust" (feat. Lou Reed) & Gorillaz, "Some Kind of Nature" (feat. Lou Reed)

I think one of the interesting things about Lou Reed is that, in recent years, he just seemed to turn up wherever he felt like. His list of guest appearances includes Gorillaz, Killers, Bruce Hornsby, Kevin Hearn (of BNL) and this neat track with Metric. I like to think he just wandered the countryside, visiting recording studios, popping in to see if anyone wanted to collaborate. And while this may have led to the much-disdained Lulu album with Metallica, it was still an interesting way to close out one's career.

Bonus Content: Paul McCartney & Bruce Springsteen Live

I don't really have much to say about this, and I don't really have to. Sometimes when I look up videos for the site YouTube serves me things that don't really go anywhere, but I would like to give the thumbs up to anyway, so this video of Paul McCartney onstage with Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band is gonna sit here anyway just radiating awesomeness.

Cover: Charles Bradley, "Stay Away"

Charles Bradley spent years as a James Brown impersonator ("Black Velvet,") toiling in obscurity before being discovered in Brooklyn and signed to the Daptone label, who are bringing the Stax sound into the 21st century. He released his first album in 2011 at age 63. Dude's got some pipes. But the last thing I would have expected to see included on his debut album was a cover of a comparatively obscure Nirvana song.

I mean, look at the clash of styles. The other cover he chose for this set was the lyrically straightforward and directly sentimental "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young. Great tune, and the combo makes a ton of sense. But by imbuing Kurt's free-associated, oblique and angsty lyrics with a blaxploitation groove lends it an added level of danger, a certain mystique -- not that Nirvana's music is lacking danger and mystery. Her, it drones and echoes out: Stay / Stay away! Instead of a petulant "get back," is becomes a real serious warning. I don't know where the idea for this came from, but it is right.

Sonic Sandwich: The Icy Poetry of Phoenix and the Stuffiness of White Lies

This is just to remark on the difference between Phoenix's 2008 album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and their 2013 effort, Bankrupt. I was slow to come around on Wolfgang Amadeus... it was one of my first reviews and I was still sussing out my voice as a critic, so I was more reticent to give it praise, and more keen to take it down for minor flaws. It's one of many pieces of writing I've done that I consider embarrassing to have written. My current opinion of that album is that there's a real beauty to it, a humanity that evades a lot of synth-based music (usually by design,) a certain nuance and icy poetry. Every little bit has its place, and there's a soft touch to it. When I was younger I thought they were maybe aiming too high and missing, but as I've gotten more experienced I've learned that they were right on target. I like just about every track on that album very much.

The follow-up, Bankrupt!, is a different creation. It's much bolder and brasher, noisier, in the mold of Foster the People or Passion Pit. They've filed all those fine points down, and filled in the gaps with, well, whatever sounds. I object to it, in the sense that I liked the earlier product much better, but it's clear they're trying something different. And sometimes it works. Not enough to get a thumbs up from me, but I can adjust my head, I think, to say "Okay, they did this, and assuming it came out like they wanted, it is what it is." There are moments on Bankrupt that really do think are great, like "Oblique City," the closing track, which feels like a good midpoint between the two modes. They are good enough at being a big, hooky band, as on "Entertainment," and "Trying To Be Cool," that they deserve continued success, and they still have ideas as on "S.O.S. In Bel Air" and "Bourgeois," that make the album into a fairly consistent product. I just think they excelled on the previous album.

Another album that I reviewed early on was White Lies' second album, Ritual. I found it such a serious, stiff affair, a bit silly and oversized. But there's a charm to that, the deadly melodrama of the musical backdrop and the severity of the delivery, the way the singer just can't seem to loosen up, like your college roommate who's really into New Order. Unlike with Phoenix, who made a conscious alteration to their sound, White Lies appear to have merely ironed out some of the kinks in theirs for 2013's Big TV. They've found a balance of all the attributes in their sound that appeals to people. Everything about this album seems to have leveled up, in conception and execution. It just clicks more.

And I think, objectively, it's a better album, but I miss that weird stilted stuffiness of the earlier one. It's one of those quirks of personal taste, that I prefer the one that is a bit gangly and lumpy, compared to the slick post-success affair. There was a life to it, if a neurotic, utterly mannered one. It was nakedly itself. I would recommend Big TV first, to a new listener, but I'll listen to Ritual more often on my own.

These cases reminded me of each other, so I sandwiched them together in this article. In both cases, I liked the predecessors more, but that doesn't invalidate the later album. There are always questions in situations like this: Is it a response to success, an attempt to paly to the audience, or merely what happens sometimes after you've recorded one album: you want to record something that sounds a bit different? I can't say authoritatively in any direction, and I'm wary of people who presume to. Mine isn't to suggest why Bankrupt! or Big TV sound the way they do, after Wolfgang Amadeus and Rituals. Mine is just to listen, if I like them, and see if I can bring them to others who might.

So here's the bottom line: Phoenix and White Lies are both bands that use a synth-heavy approach rooted in 80s pop music. Whereas Phoenix's is hooky and intended for the dancefloor, White Lies' is contemplative and in its way, romantic. Both albums feature some solid hooks and really well-done tracks, although both bands have recorded albums I like better. Sometimes, you've just got to lay your stance bare.

One of my little pet peeves in other reviews is when the critic simply cannot get over their opinion of the earlier CD enough to judge the new one on its own merits. And that may in fact be the case here, but I'm willing to cop to it. I like Wolfgang Amadeus a lot, and this is a different thing that I don't like so much. But hey, I didn't always like Wolfgang Amadeus that much, so maybe in time I'll come around.

The Other One: Third Eye Blind, "Never Let You Go"

It wouldn't be fair to call Third Eye Blind a one-hit wonder. In the late 90's and early 2000s they had a commendable string of hits that included not only "Semi-Charmed Life," but also the similarly ubiquitous anti-suicide jingle "Jumper" and teen heartbreak classic "How's It Going To Be?" But a decade-plus on, "Semi-Charmed" far outshines those tunes that, at the time, reached a similar level of success.

The one song by TEB that I thought never got its due was "Never Let You Go." Having achieved popularity with their earlier singles, they had the task of maintaining that level of success without seeming like they had run out of ideas. "Never Let You Go" does this exceptionally. It starts with the fact that it is built on essentially the chord progression from "Sweet Jane," which is an instant recipe for an indelible hook, then add in some of the same late-90s sunny-gloom of "Semi-Charmed" and "Jumper," and you've got a winner. If it doesn't have the cache of "Semi-Charmed Life," it's still a worthy successor and a perfectly-crafted piece of 90s pop-rock.

Does it Rock: Babyshambles, "Nothing Comes to Nothing"

I'll admit that I'm not overly familiar with the Pete Doherty songbook... The Libertines are one of those bands that I "get," and appeals to me, but I want to like a bit more than I do. That said, the songs I've heard off this Babyshambles album have really hit the spot for me. It's like Vampire Weekend's instruments being played by Cage the Elephant, or Joe Strummer covering the Gin Blossoms (or... Pete Doherty covering the Gin Blossoms.) It's not overly sophisticated stuff, power-pop chords and a real messy delivery. Absorbing stuff here. It rocks.

The 5: The Who (Non-CSI)

When I was deciding how to do my second "The 5," the list of potential topics was topped by the Who. I love the Who's music, but more than that their discography is pretty pliable: do you love the rough-edged 60s post-mod club rock singles, the rock operas, the ambitious setpieces, the proto-punk, the ballads? The Who hail from a time when bands were obliged to try everything, and they did in their own style, with the unique skillsets each band member brought to the table. Compounding this were the frequent mental and emotional breakdowns suffered by chief songwriting voice Pete Townshend, who constantly doubted his own spiritual direction and the entire purpose of creating music to begin with.

Things get somewhat more frustrating when you realize that an objective list of their best songs starts to look like a list of TV theme songs, with their discography having been adopted by the CSI Franchise. And that's all well and good, but those songs, particularly "Won't Get Fooled Again," are so deeply ingrained in the public consciousness in that context that it becomes difficult to talk about them outside of it. Not impossible, mind you, but those three songs would be an easy shortcut to constructing this list, because nobody would argue. So right at the outset, I am ruling out "Who Are You," "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Baba O'Riley" from this list... which is a shame, because as I said they are three of the band's best tunes, and the last one is my absolute favourite song of theirs. But crazy, arbitrary limitations are what The 5 is about, so let's look at what's left:



1: "My Generation"

Let's start with something simple. Basically the entire concept of punk can be traced back to this seminal single, which signalled the Who's rougher, more belligerent take on British Invasion-era rock. A lot of attention gets paid to Daltrey's stuttering delivery of Townshend's perfectly rebellious lyrics, but my ear always goes right to John Entwistle's bass and Keith Moon's drums, which are the more prominent part of the sound through most of the song, upending the traditional rock group dynamic we're used to. This is a song that puts its money where its mouth is.



2: "The Kids Are Alright"

This is almost the inverse of "My Generation." Where that was a song of brashness and self-assurance, this is one of modesty and self-erasure. It's a song about letting other guys dance with your girl. It's not as raucous or incendiary as "My Generation" by a longshot, it's all jangly and restrained. It's The Who as hep, too cool for school mod pop act. Yet it takes balls to be that modest, to send your girl off with other guys (because the kids are "alright.") The individual powers of the band don't really assert themselves as much in "Generation," but they're all here, from Moon's drums to Entwistle's fleet-fingered bass, and a tight, pummeling guitar break from Townshend, to a surprising amount of harmonies accompanying Daltrey's resigned everyman vocal.



3: "A Quick One While He's Away"

Either you get it or you don't and either way is fine by me. The Who's first stab and longform songwriting/storytelling in song is this cute little ditty about a housewife being seduced by a train driver while waiting for her husband to return from a yearlong absence. And while it's not essential enough to The Who's discography to make it onto any of their Greatest Hits compilations, it captures them basically at the moment between being the band that recorded "My Generation" and the one that recorded Tommy. It takes balls to attempt a gag like this, and for me it's an indication they could pull it off even bigger. "You are forgiven / You are forgiven / You are forgiven..."



4: "Behind Blue Eyes"

As the villain song for the abandoned Lifehouse project, "Behind Blue Eyes" carries a lot of weight to it. It grounds and humanizes the point-of-view character of the piece, now just a random moment on the Who's Next album. It's confessional and sincere, and yet its character remains frustrated and angry, succumbing to his baser nature. The build of the song, that moment when it kicks into higher gear, is spot-on, and all of the bandmembers are working at full tilt here (as if they ever weren't, but still.) A classic rock gem in the truest sense.



5: "Love Reign O'er Me"

The Who are a band that wore their spirituality (well, Townshend's spirituality) openly, while managing to weave it into their rock aesthetic. Ultimately it was about freedom and release through music. I could have put in "Join Together" or "This Song is Over," or perhaps even "Bargain," which is superficially about winning over a girl and yet very clearly about spiritual gain. But the hitch with "Love Reign O'er Me" is the simplicity. At this moment in the Quadrophenia project, Townshend's tendancy toward gangly, specific lyrics give way to a general sentiment that captures and enraptures, and Daltry knocks it out of the fucking park. This is my favourite part of any rock opera they did, because it was both among the rockiest and most operatic.

Cover: Kings of Leon, "Dancing On My Own"

The King of Leon are not really on my radar. I say that because they are a band that people get really upset about, for whatever reason, I guess because they have a bunch of hits, and those hits I guess don't sound a lot like their early stuff, and yadda yadda you know that same old song and dance. I never found them offensive enough to get upset about, and wasn't wowed by them enough to defend them.

But this. This.

It's a known fact that I happen to think Robyn's "Dancing On My Own" is one of the great beautiful dance anthems of our time, and I was hitting that drum way back at the beginning of this blog, and this cover does exactly what a great cover ought to do and wrenches every essential bit of goodness out of that original, and then filters it through the new band. This is some amazing shit. I wish they had gone a bit bigger, (they are an arena rock band, after all) but it's still rad as all hell.

If/Then: Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers

Nicki Bluhm and her band evoke plenty of rustic-polished acts from across the generations: Sheryl Crowe, the Eagles, the Band, Eva Cassidy, Fleetwood Mac, Dawes, Band of Horses... basically, if you are my dad, you'll probably like this album. In fact, I dig it myself, it's a thoroughly clean good time with just enough rock and soul, and they find enough routes into their sound to keep the album interesting track after track.

The 5: Nirvana

Let's have an argument.

I think, in the ~3 years I've run this site, I haven't said many controversial things. Generally, when you consider your job to be "point people at awesome music," there's very little room for dissent. It's true! Maybe I just have great taste, or maybe there's no point in going "No, that new David Bowie album isn't as amazing as you think it is" (because it is) or, most likely, because I'm just not doing this on a big enough scale to stir up any ill-will from anybody at all. This lame little site (amazing as it is) is mainly for me an my friends and nobody else sees it except when I happen to get retweeted by an artist I cover. (And their fans never stick around anyway.) My co-worker Stacie has said that she never even has to read the site, because as soon as I tweet a link, she just shrugs and goes "Okay, he liked that."

True enough.

The 5 is an idea I had a few weeks ago when I was having my bi-monthly internal struggle about whether to stop doing SOTW altogether. Except it wasn't internal because it was on Twitter. It kind of comes out of the same place as the Best Song Ever tourney, which I never did finish #2, which is that I'm interested in trying ways of praising or quantifying my enjoyment of music that don't get tried often. What I came up with this time was "The 5." That's 5 items in a category, not ranked, but five items that make up the core of that topic. The initial idea is to be songs by bands, but it could end up being bands, lyrics, bandmembers, albums, riffs, in categories like years, genres, geography, scenes, or some other selection. But let's start off slow.

I picked 5 because that is objectively too few to be complete. It is prohibitively restrictive, and nobody is going to be happy with the result. I don't think there is a single thing worth discussing that can be summed up with fewer than 5 examples, and I want to pay special attention to what makes the cut and what doesn't. Because there will be room for argument, room for error, room for complaint. Or maybe it will end up just being so succinct that 5 will be enough. And I'm starting with Nirvana because in their few active years they produced so much that is so diverse and so ardently defended by its fans, and I'm cocky enough to think I know enough to distill it perfectly. Even though you could fill this list up with 5 tracks from Nevermind and be done.



1: "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

Let's start with the obvious here. A few years ago I worked with a guy named Trevor, and we bonded over our love for Nirvana, but every time we would listen to Nevermind he would express his dislike for "Smells Like Teen Spirit." He liked every single other thing Nirvana ever recorded, but this tune was anathema to him. I called him out on hipster exclusionism, that he hated it because it was a "hit," and he denied it. He genuinely thought this song was in some way inferior to all of the rest of Nirvana's songs. Even, like, "Hairspray Queen."

So let's cut the bullshit and all acknowledge that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is a genuinely amazing song in the context of being a pop single. It is the outsider breaking in. It is a nasty, skanky attitude dressed up with a shiny hook that melts and destroys everything else on the radio just by being next to it, it carries a sarcastic, revolutionary rhetoric, and is essentially poison, and yet by virtue of being catchy and memorable, is totally fit for public consumption. When you cut through the mythology of some kind of overnight rebellion in rock music, it holds up to the myth astonishingly well.



2: "Sliver"

A few years ago, Gaslight Anthem did a faithful cover of this song on their album Handwritten, and it came off about as well as Gus Van Sant's version of Psycho. They got all the notes right, and Brian Fallon's voice is kinda like Cobain's - he can even scram a bit! But it just felt like the cover your friend's band plays and highlights how badly Gaslight Anthem are not Nirvana. Even while being faithful, it lacks Cobain's childish impudence, sarcasm and charm, the idea of writing a punk song from the perspective of a bored whiny child. The nuance of the idea is just lost. If they had covered "In Bloom" or "Lithium," they could have done justice, but they picked something that was just beyond their grasp and really gives such a great insight as to why Nirvana is Nirvana.



3: "Polly (Unplugged)"

Their MTV Unplugged set will always be known as one of those amazing moments in rock history, and I could have selected any number of cuts, including several incredible covers and a number of amazing renditions of mostly lesser-known songs. It's up to you whether this version of "Polly" is better than the original, or whether it was one of the best songs of the night, but I think it bridges between the two at the place where Cobain was a writer and artist, and not just a noisemaker.



4: "Serve the Servants"

Here's the curveball. I think everyone's got their own favourite Nirvana deep cuts and there are a lot of options here. As the opening track for In Utero, "Serve" does a lot to displace the perceived notion of Nirvana as a glossy put-on, punk-metal imitators getting rich off fake angst. Or at least, it directly addresses it in the lyrics, "Teenage angst has paid off well / Now I'm bored and old." I think this is one of the most formidable songs Kurt wrote and sets the stage for the very challenging In Utero album as a whole. The strange thing about this choice, I guess is that in a weird grungey way, "Serve the Servants" is perfectly catchy and hooky, but that does nothing to dull its message or impact. It's still full of sour, discordant notes.



5: "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?"

It really couldn't have been anything else, could it? For the last act on their Unplugged show, Kurt & Co aligned themselves with Depression-era bluesman Lead Belly and it sounded like the most natural thing in the world, invoking a kind of eternal misery that carries down from generation to generation and lingers with us still. But attempts at profundity aside, it's an amazing fucking performance. This cover is kind of exactly what you want from this band.

So there's my attempt to put Nirvana into five very different songs from five different stages of their career. I'm not saying this is definitive, I'm saying it's not. You could build an entirely different set of five, or even two or three, out of great songs I left off.

Does it Rock? Bad Things, "Anybody"

I'll confess, I'm not even sure I love this. There's not always certainty to the "Does it Rock" series, although I usually end up in the affirmative. I listened to the first 30 seconds of this thinking "Hm, this is a good start, I hope they don't squander it." I've been disappointed before. But no, they make all the right moves: it's mannered enough to hit the charts but rocky enough to please jaded folks like me. I grow more anhedonic and tough to please by the day, and yet it's also telling that anything that's just a little good seems laudable to me. It seems like it would be a "middle of the pack" late 90s rock single, but in the context of 2013 it just seems refreshing and fun to hear. It cheers me up.

Does it Rock? Haim, "The Wire"

Here we have a nice, crisp, clean and wholly addictive pop rock song. The sound is subtle and restrained, yet catchy and classic. The YouTube comments pitch endless comparisons, and I'd throw in my own as Huey Lewis and the News, or maybe Hall & Oates, some good workable pop. Here's some legit stuff: off the beaten path of what everyone else is doing, and yet familiar and instantly classic. Compulsively re-playable. Have a great weekend.

Does It Rock? Arctic Monkeys, "Do I Wanna Know?"

As this site will attest, I am a huge, huge admirer of the first two Arctic Monkeys albums. I still enjoy listening to their later stuff, but I get less crazy about it. Whether they lost their way or simply became something that interested me less, I can't say. (And the fact that I'm not willing to say explains why I am not yet being paid for my opinions.) But I believe, fundamentally, they are a good band, and can turn out a good song whenever called upon.

The debut single from their upcoming album hits the spot for me. Again, it's not a return to "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor." The motormouthed brattiness has aged into contemplative, unwinding statements that seem tempered by recreational pot rather than amphetamines (whether Alex Turner uses drugs, I don't know, but that's my metaphor.) The riff on this reminds me of Elbow's "Grounds For Divorce," which is fine because that song isn't really what Elbow sounds like anyway. This is a good slow groove, and instead of hitting you with a crash bang dynamite chorus, it works its way into your skin insidiously, begs repeat listens, tempts and teases.

Is the current permutation of the Arctic Monkeys, which has proven to be the band's lasting creative interest, more mature? More thoughtful, intelligent, savvy? Maybe but maybe not, maybe it's just slower and deeper and that gives it the illusion of learnedness. If so, it's an illusion I can buy into. Which is helpful, because even though this is not the Arctic Monkeys sound I fell for at first, it's one I can come to appreciate.

Case Study: Van Halen, "Dance the Night Away"

Fuck, Van Halen had a ton of good songs. Just looking at the hits, you've got the titanic "Jump," the rock solid "Running With the Devil," the gloriously sleazy "Hot For Teacher," cover versions of "Pretty Woman" and "You Really Got Me" that brought them to new frontiers, showy instrumentals like "Eruption"... this band was the glitzy, glamorous synthesis of everything rock was becoming in the late 70's.

But for me, the song that sums up all the pleasures of listening to Van Halen is "Dance the Night Away." Not a little-known song by any stretch, but one that seems to take a backseat to those gems. This song has it all, though, and to the fullest degree: it has one of Roth's best vocals, sexy but charming and playful, beckoning in the lyrics, "But don't skip romance 'cause ya old enough / to dance the night away." Those lyrics are terrifically simple-minded, but they're aptly effortless. They soar and infuse the soul to do just that. It's a perfectly fitted good-time rock and roll song that comes with a genuine sense of wellness.

And that guitar. Oh, boy, that guitar. EVH was a player of immense technical skill and discipline, and sometimes even his best work sounds overly clean and precise for my rock tastes, but that groove, the way it ebbs and flows beneath the vocal, especially the hook under the chorus, the way it walks and pings, oh yeah. That tone is so crisp, and that riff leading into the fadeout just completely sums up the entire mood and movement of the song. You could listen to it for ten more minutes, especially thanks to the fine rhythm work of Alex Van Halen and Michael Anthony. This is the best possible combination of his pristine guitar and Diamond Dave's wild vocal, I tell you, and that's amongst many fine examples. The strange alchemy that was Van Halen (the real Van Halen) is in its best balance here. If it's not their "best song," the one that marks the highwater of their accomplishments, it's the one that shows exactly what this band is like.

Now Listening: The Mowgli's

One of the things that has happened, since I've opened this site up a bit, is that I feel free to write about things that I might not otherwise have targeted. I really like the Mowgli's, and I feel like they would be worthy of the site's full length review treatment (if I ever do that again) except there's half a chance that the charm of their frothy, high-energy pop rock approach might wear off this jaded old 20something by then.

This is probably going to appeal most to teens, people who have seen enough to know what they like but still able to be impressed by something novel. It's unrelentingly peppy and positive (even in the acoustic or intimate numbers) and a lot of the songs feel like giant communal singalongs. There are hooks, pounding drums, playful synths... this is music that hasn't been tainted by cynicism or irony. It's also not bland or shrill in its earnestness. It's easy to keep listening as they play through their tricks one at a time, then layer them over each other in different ways. It's sometimes grandiose, sometimes intimate, sometimes tightly assembled and sometimes loose. It's explorational.

This is just really fun to listen to, youthful and vibrant. I can see people who have been around longer than the intended audience, or me, being quite unimpressed, but I think that "been there done that" attitude is death for music criticism because every time is someone's first. There will be people who hear this CD - 15, 16 year olds - and it's the first "good" thing they heard. Nobody is born a Bowie fan, you know?

Buy this now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

Now Listening: Yeezus

This review slash write-up slash random bullshit comes with a full disclaimer that you have absolutely no reason to take my opinion of any hip hop album seriously ever. Ever. It dominates so much of the musical landscape but it's a form that I have yet to truly adapt my head to. Left to my own devices I'd just listen to David Bowie and Hollerado all day every day, but Yeezy gets people in my store, despite having an audience that should be willing and able to download.

As for the album itself, well, I admire it a bit. I might never even listen to it again, but I like it more than what I heard of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It's a hardass record and he does some daring shit on it, making abrasive clashing sounds on it, speaking hard truths and making no effort to contrive a hit out of it. It's the testament to his cult of personality that it is allowed to simply be, and to be whatever he wills it, because he wields that power. That cache. He's reached an artistic state of grace, where he wags the dog, and now he has the daunting task of keeping ahead of himself. Which is a good problem to have. The stunts he does attempt, like bringing in a sample of "Strange Fruit" for "Blood on the Leaves," manage to come off successfully. Kanye is many things, but not someone who reaches for the middle, and I respect that wherever it's found.

I mean, look. I'm not the authority. My blind spot for hip hop music is one of the dozens of reasons nobody will ever pay me to write about music for a living, I'm just trying to get better at it. Well, get better, or just get content, since Yeezus is dominating the dialog this week and Magna Carta will be dominating the dialog next week. It has my approval, for whatever that might be worth to you. It's a risky, almost dangerous thing, that really accounts for itself.

Sonic Sandwich: Outside Blurred Lines

There's an old line about the film critic, Pauline Kael. Famously, perhaps stereotypically New York left wing, she was stunned that Nixon won re-election in 1972, saying at the time, "I don't know anyone who voted for him." This may never have happened, but I think about it sometimes when I need to make sense out of something I don't like, or don't get. And this time, it's not about Vampire Weekend (or Vamp Wknd.) This is about a song by Robin Thicke, the soul singer and son-of-Alan, called "Blurred Lines," which is currently cutting a swath of destruction across mainstream radio.

It's a kinda-funky trifle of a song. It sounds like it was written in about 18 minutes, while a Casio Keyboard demo was playing and a room full of people pitched cheeky, cutesy lines like "What rhymes with 'hug me?'" It's kinda repetitive, and every time it seems like it's going somewhere, it foresakes a hook and goes on its way until it spins out. When I first heard it, I thought of it as a nuisance: not as objectionable as LMFAO or Bruno Mars, not quirky like Macklemore, not transcendent like Ke$ha or JT or Daft Punk.

But man, somebody must be hearing something in this song. Dunno if there was brainwash signals in those Casio loops, or that weird little Chimp squeal that it occasionally emits, or whatever. But people have been asking about it. As you may know, I work in retail, I sell (among other things) CDs, which are still a thing people sometimes buy, and I've been asked about this song many many times, with the CD not even slated for release until the end of July. There's fervent interest in this song, albeit mainly from middle-aged ladies, and I'm partly convinced that's because they're still pining for his dad. But no, this song has taken off. This is a legit thing, and not a trick, not a "Oh, they just used the same beats and hooks and tricks every other songs uses so of course they had a hit." That isn't what happened here.

This is why I am not making money off of music criticism. I couldn't have seen this one coming. I can't explain it, I can't account for it, I can't even really relate to the people who like it, unlike a lot of things. I can step back and scratch my head and go, "Well, I guess it's a hit," but I can't step far enough outside my narrow worldview to explain or discuss why. I write about a few things decently, and even fewer things very insightfully, and this is far, far outside that. We don't really talk about pop radio here, but even if we did, I still wouldn't have pegged this one as something special. Y'know? Wouldn't have seen it. But it's different, and it's kinda funky I guess, and people like it. Look forward to half the songs on the top 40 sounding exactly like it in 8 months.

I wish I was better. I want to keep getting better. I still don't want to spend a lot of my time thinking about music I don't love, though, so I'll probably still never make money off this site, and I'll still never understand how a song like "Blurred Lines" becomes a huge hit. But it resonates, and you can't fake that shit. It doesn't always last, but when it hits, it's true.

If/Then: Vampire Weekend/King Charles

Speaking of Vampire Weekend, if they are your jam, check out King Charles: equally foppish and quirky, whilst being very mindful of its genre blending, and retaining the pop sensibility. It's the "pleasure listening" version of the Vamp Wknd (which, again, I hope doesn't catch on, yet will continue to use.)

Now Listening: Modern Vampires of the City

What even is Vampire Weekend's music? Whimsical, creative, cutesy, unpredictable... they can throw any trick or twist on any song and turn it instantly memorable. And yet that same quality, rightly, keeps a lot of people away from them. Sometimes I am just not in the mood for their shit. Sometimes excessive quirk is a turnoff. There are reasons music generally takes the forms it does, and while the Vamp Wknd (as nobody probably calls them) takes that for their backbone - at its core the music is eminent pop rock - they lay on so much extraneous chicanery that every few tracks I need to hit pause, rest my ears, maybe listen to something that I "get" more. At its worst, its best qualities are shrill, annoying, frustrating, confusing, distracting, irritating. Hipness is kind of a shell game in that way: keep it moving so they never figure you out, never label you. Stay ahead of your audience so they never get over you. Maybe, they'll think, they just don't get it. (By they, I mean me.)

Maybe you really love Vampire Weekend! Maybe you're never not in the mood for them. Good for you! I can totally see that. Personally I don't have the energy to keep pace with their relentlessly changing sound. Are they innovators, imitators, curators of the weird? I don't know. I'm actually kind of glad they do what they do, and can safely recommend this album to anyone who's of that mindset. Personally, I'm not, but I get it. Kind of. Maybe. What I do know is that very few things that have a chance of being great are for everybody.