Kipling's Nightmare

The only thing worth remembering about Zulu Dawn is in its closing minutes. A warning is issued about what comes of Colonialism and the triumphant Zulu warriors sing as they walk away from a day full of bloodshed and arrogance. The chant, an exuberant victory cry, is infectious. It hints at a culture capable of great beauty and community, which goes some way toward thwarting the film's depiction of the Zulus as violent and unknowable. The other. Even if the villains are the un-empathetic British, as represented by sweltering, loathsome Peter O'Toole, the Zulus are never more than abstract. What colonialists always fail to recognize is that once you call a land home, no force on heaven or earth can change that. The music that serves as a coda to wholesale slaughter is a haunting reminder of spiritual ownership. Natal belongs to the Zulu (as Vietnam did to the Vietnamese) just as this song could come from the mouths of any other civilization. The film falters for a number of reasons, but not giving the Zulu a point of view, or even much screen time before they start taking back the land from the hopelessly ill-prepared British is one of its biggest. It wants to sympathize with them, but that's beyond the film's limited means. It fails to realize that Cy Endfield's Zulu had already quietly done that.

Not that anything else about Zulu is quiet. From John Barry's menacing, insistent march to the sounds of crackling rifles echoing through the arid planes of Rorke's Drift, Zulu plays heavy on the ears. Until this moment in art history, white audiences will have read about the faraway corners of 'darkest Africa' in Kipling and Conrad and seen it in photographs, but never before could they hear the sound of Africa. The film that kicked off the 50s 3D boom was a jungle-bound adventure about rogue lions called Bwana Devil. Having your personal space invaded by big cats was a strong enough advertisement for the technology that it carried the idea into craze territory (that they represent Africa, barging into the American movie house, a heretofore safe, white space, must have been equal parts enticing and terrifying). Kipling would surely have approved. It turned fear into a carnival ride and a continent into a sideshow stage. The narrative was for the taking and Africa could replace the old west as the white man's new frontier. After Zulu, films like Cornel Wilde's survival horror The Naked Prey, itself based on a tale originally concerning Blackfoot Native Americans, become possible (Imagine studios allowing that to be shot in 3D). If Zulu Dawn is the ugly, artless antithesis of the idea of Africa as a white man's sandbox (it almost feels like Italian exploitation, with its aimless miserabilism and grey direction), Zulu is a compromise, trying to respect both sides of an intractable conflict, trying to understand a whole host of national mindsets. Besides the Zulu warriors whose chief subscribes to notions of pride and fair play, there are Swedish missionaries, the wounded swiss corporal in the Natal Native Contingent, the Boer advisor who helps the British understand their Zulu enemies, and the Welsh and English men who make up the regiment. The Welsh look down on the Swiss and the English, who piss right back at the Welsh. And among the whites only the Boer considers the Zulus smart enough to be the formidable adversary they are. The Boer officer seems to understand that his hatreds are out of his hands, making him the most stubborn party. The missionaries are meant to be the voice of reason, of conscientiousness. They're dismissed not long after the fighting starts. There is no place for reason at Rorke's Drift, which quickly becomes host to a cacophonous din of violence and disarray. 

Which may account for a Swedish man of god being played by English man of drink Jack Hawkins. Hired no doubt because of the chapped velvet tenor of his voice, Hawkins begins calm but shaky, whispering to daughter Ulla Jacopson of the Zulu: "They are a great people," completely unaware that he's giving everyone the benefit of a doubt they haven't asked for. As he slowly realizes that neither the English nor the Africans will relent, he shouts into the howling wind, growing more desperate and drunk by the moment. The other voice of dissent comes from cock-eyed surgeon Patrick Magee, who takes particular glee in dressing down his charges. War is a disgusting business and he sees the officers as pigs splashing around in the muck of human failure. His slithering diction has stayed with me since childhood "Damn you Chard! And all you butchers!" his Northern Irish brogue drying out his 'R's and elongating his 'U's. Their voices together share the same qualities as the soil, as obverses Welsh private Thomas, "No moisture in it, nothing to hold a man in his grave." No surprise that their words aren't heeded. Thomas and private Owen (Neil McCarthy and Ivor Emmanuel) are the leaders of the soldiers' choir, and their dulcet harmonies stand in sharpest contrast to the sounds of war. They will be called upon to lead the men in song in defiance of the Zulu's war chant just as the light of a new day hits the combatants. The irony is that it'd take a true lack of imagination to prefer the Welsh song to that of the Zulu. 

That sound, that beautiful chanting, will likely stay with most viewers after every other detail has faded. It sounds like nothing else on earth, though the band TV On The Radio, keen-eared students of African music, have come close to achieving the peculiar tumbling whirlwind of voices. There is real power in these men coming in contact with this music, aware that the sound will be thrice as frightening to men who have no point of reference for melodies like this. It sounds alien to us because we hear it as they would. Endfield presents the incantations of the Zulus as possessing an otherworldly power, a sign of awed respect. In its opening moments we get the full majesty of Barry's score, which gives way to a familiar English (though technically Welsh) speaker: Richard Burton, patron saint of the theatre. With perfect diction and that irresistible, tightly coiled voice he informs us of the outcome of the battle of Isandlwana but he's drowned out by the sound of the aftermath. Then the Zulu singing overwhelms even that. Their song is the spirit of Natal itself and it hides in the hills. Jacobson will lose herself listening to it, completely unprepared for the overwhelming power and earthy sensuous it has. It represents a break from every myth she was told growing up with a priest for a dad. Their percussion, a ghostly rattling of spears against shields will announce the Zulu's approach before their astonishing first appearance, coating most of the skyline with their impressive numbers. A display that would shake any colonial dreamer to his core. It's the sound of the land saying "no". Kipling was in South Africa during the Boer War and wrote Poetry in favor of the Brits. Oh to have placed him within earshot of the rattling and singing. The warriors are coded with the same menace as the giant ants of THEM! or the distant drummers of I Walked With A Zombie and they are suitably terrifying when they first appear rattling their weapons up close like a thousand intruders knocking on the door. Endfield's respect for their intimidation tactics is palpable. The song starts next, one man leading and the rest responding in shocking rapidity. Their voices cut through the air like a hatchet. That they're just a decoy is all part of the plan. 

"I rather fancy that he's nobody's son and heir now." There is no honor in dying in Zulu, just as in reality many of those involved never benefited from being given the Victoria Cross. In perhaps the cruelest instance the swiss Corporal Ferdinand Schiess in reality died on a barge back from South Africa after this incident and was buried at sea. The film needs to hold onto a modicum of romance and so spares us the worst of the tragedy of Rorke's Drift without losing the big picture. The British who have second thoughts about fighting, like the buffoonish cook, are killed first. It's still a fairly vicious worldview, but if you play with fire you can't drop the match on the rug. Never underestimate your opponent. That's the movie's overwhelming theme. The constant refrain, with some variation, "We'll make an Englishmen of you yet." Once the British stop trying to pretend they can change anyone's mind, and stop using that phrase, they fare much better. Its final use, in a raid on the sickbay so tense that it still makes me hold my breath, erases any lingering sense of pride in the uniform or the crown. The Zulu are too fiercesome to be cowed, to be converted. All these men can do is respect their might. Ditto Lieutenants Chard (Stanley Baker, his deep set eyes borrowed from some bird of prey) and Bromhead ("Introducing Michael Caine," fully formed), who start at loggerheads trying to determine who should lead the defenses. Chard resents Bromhead's privelege (Caine runs perfectly, as if swaddled in bearer bonds as a child instead of blankets), Bromhead Chard's brusqueness. They drop their pretenses and prejudices when the shooting starts. What the British have to do is find their own harmony to sing in. It isn't the singing of the early dawn choir that saves them, it's the shouting of Bromhead and Chard signaling the synchronized firing of their men, a strategy that undoubtedly saves their lives. Caine and Baker's voices propel through the sound of the zulu chanting to announce the next volley of gunfire. "Front Rank! Fire!" "Free rank! Fire!" "Fire." Caine's phlegmy howl and Baker's hoarse two-tone, wildly different war cries, working in time with the sound of gunfire. It's only this song that forces the chief of the Zulu to stop underestimating the small contingent of men who stood up to him. His reply is one final song of salutation, a sign of respect. And that in the end is all anyone in Endfield's world seeks. Endfield withholds judgment on these men until the final minutes, just like the chief. Their pettiness and pride will cost lives, perhaps their own. Endfield finds them at their lowest, too tired to indulge in their worst habits, framed in a burnt-down hospital in a composition that outstrips the best of The Searchers. They're awaiting what their enemy will do next, unable to give themselves credit for what they've accomplished. It is only here that they can be rewarded, when they're incapable of considering such an outcome. This is why Zulu endears. It rewards selflessness, cooperation and respect above patriotism. The sound of men trusting each other to survive rings in your ears. The rest is just noise. 

Best albums of 2011

Sorry for the delay, but we've all been a touch busy.

Tim!

Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What

The man is 70 but after about twenty years of relatively sedated albums Paul Simon's newest entry is strangely rejuvenating. He brings back his African and Latin American influences for a subtle complicated sound that simmers beneath his insightful, touching, and often hilarious lyrics.

Tyler, The Creator - Goblin

This album is seriously sick. It's disgusting. I was physically overcome with nausea while listening to this album. That's how offensive it is. I haven't been so shocked and revolted by someone's lyrics since I first heard the Marshal Mathers LP when I was 12. And I couldn't be more pleased.

Fox!

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
The Decemberists - The King is Dead
Florence + The Machine - Ceremonials
Radiohead - King of Limbs
Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto
Tom Waits - Bad as Me
Danger Mouse - Rome
Robbie Robertson - How to Become Clairvoyant

Cliff Martinez & Various - Drive

Scout!

1. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

-Well, what'd you expect. I'm not immune to beautiful harmonies, or sundrenched folk/country mixed with indie sensibilities. They might as well be recording these things just for me. I love Fleet Foxes. I think their compositions show a growth and ambition that outstrips even the "can you believe how easy we make this sound?" effortless gorgeousness of their debut. The first time I listened to this all the way through I saw an epic, a tragedy, the spanish civil war rendered in sonic brushstrokes. Maybe I'm the crest of a wave in an immeasurable tide by putting this at the top of my list, but I cannot refuse that this album had the deepest effect on me this year.

2. The Horrors - Skying

-Maturity means something when you talk about The Horrors. Listen to their debut album and EP and see five goths looking to spook the squares with their aggressively loud swamp punk. One album later and they'd accrued a sound that made perfect sense given the influences that occasionally broke through the impish twelve bar blues and yet represented a massive amount of growth. With their third album, they've expanded that sound to something with enough hills and valleys that you can lose yourself for days. Ride, Jesus & Mary Chain, Stone Roses, Sisters of Mercy, My Bloody Valentine, sure, yeah, but there's an optimism that escaped those bands. Maybe because they know they're just getting started. I realized not too long ago that whenever I can't think of what to listen to, I just put on Skying. After the thousandth time, you think I'd be even a little bored. Don't ask me, I'm just a fan.

3. TV On The Radio - Nine Types of Light

-I hesitate to make so much of this band's legacy about the death of multi-instrumentalist Gerard Smith, because while this record is a tribute to his contributions to the group's ever-evolving sound, it's also a celebration of not only his, but all of the band member's love of life. The most upbeat and beautiful of their albums to date, Nine Types of Light feels the most like a band playing in the same room. Whereas before they were architects building worlds together or chemists experiment with the DNA of post-punk and rock-and-roll, this album found them at their most relaxed. They've always been a kind of hive-mind, as evidenced by their trademark vocal blending, which here is more about support than mixing. Tunde and Kyp sing for each other, rather than as one voice, each given the breadth and space needed to showcase the resplendency of each man's range. And all the while Dave, Jaleel and Gerard split their time between crafting the usual tapestries of sound, but also just grooving. This was the band as we've never heard them, the same but different. Their sound may change forever; if so Nine Types of Light was as enlightening a closure to this part of their lives as anyone could ask for and will always be a testament to the five blinding talents that this band houses.

4. Wye Oak - Civilian

-If I ever meet the two people who create the boundless, ecstatic rock music on each Wye Oak album, I have to first apologize for stealing one of their songs in my zombie film (I've made 70 cents so far; we can certainly split it, though my cast might be angry). Then I have to thank them for making something new and inspiring out of something so simple. Jenn Wasner's guitar works as a microcosm of the miracle of the band's sound. On "Two Small Deaths," the album's opening track, the tone is threadbare, only increasing in tremolo for the chorus, yet between that and the muffled bass, the plain keyboard hum and light drumming, there's a sound big enough to blanket a city. Wasner's voice by itself is a thing of mysterious beauty, and Andy Stack, her one-man rhythm section keeps up beautifully. They never overdo it, but every song sounds impossibly big. The whole canon of 90s rock was digested to make their sound, but it's given back in the form of an understanding hug. They've taken aggression and angst and softened it to comfort their listeners. The album has its somber passages, but the feeling one is left with is overwhelmingly hopeful, as if Wasner has seen what hurts you most and, as she professes in tragic album closer "doubt," she'd do anything for you if it felt right. An honest and humble rock album that has something deeply warming at the heart of every song.

5. The War on Drugs - Slave Ambient

-I have a weakness for bands with big, friendly sounds. Arcade Fire's oddball debut gave way to an immutable call to action. Broken Social Scene's sexy shyness has since become a clear throated shout, imploring you to feel at all costs. The War On Drugs have the same peaks in them, but their delivery is quiet, brotherly and cool. Each song, whether it's a laid back guitar painting, a slight but charging rocker or an icy wall of noise, has a welcome feeling, like a dozen hands on your shoulder affirming that you've done alright. The sound is effusively pleasant and everyone's on the same page, wrapping each other in their instruments, never letting anyone go it alone. A familial familiarity greets you with each return.

6. Dirty Beaches - Badlands

-My only complaint: I want more. Badlands couldn't serve up enough of Dirty Beaches trademark (in my head) mix of Warholian buzz and old fashioned rock and roll. Like entering an abandoned factory and breaking every window on your way in (Speedway King) Badlands soon gets down to business, playing Link Wray through a hundred year old ham radio. Taking rock arrangements, cutting them with distortion and playing them ad infinitum, Dirty Beaches does for rock what Godard did for genre; cut up it up, show you its insides and then see if his meddling makes you love it any less. A statement, sure, but also one hell of a good time.

7. Psychic Teens - TEEN

runners up: The Psychic Paramount - II/Psychic Babble - My Brother's Ears/My Sister's Eyes

-One of the best parts of editing this blog is that I get to make the rules. So while some people might recuse themselves of reviewing an album made by someone they knew, I get to celebrate them. I take no little pride in saying that I know some of the Psychic Teens and they're all awesome guys. That said, I was a fan first and TEEN is one of the best fusions of styles I've ever heard. Like Joy Division meets Lunes, Psychic have a sound I find irresistable, all reverb and gliding guitar and glorious, glorious feedback. This is dark and sexy as post-punk gets.

8. Radiohead - The King of Limbs

-A friend once said that anyone who doesn't like Radiohead is trying not to like them. Their sound's been picked apart, especially on this record which was born in the age of instant gratification and rabbit-hole style music criticism. What I will say is that after hearing this album, it very suddenly became difficult to listen to their earlier albums. If they were capable of this, why hadn't they always made albums this minimal, yet striking? It's a ludicrous question, because obviously it took years to get them here, but I couldn't be more pleased that they're here. Now if only they'd release a new record a year like the free jazz mavericks they've become. I love Radiohead and won't make excuses about including them on my top 20.

9. Real Estate - Days

-Being a fan of post-punk often makes you easy to please. Like a game of spot-the-reference, I feel happiest when I can put on a new album and hear that the people making it love the same things I do. Sometimes that's enough. Real Estate take the elements I love about The Feelies, The Replacements and R.E.M. and stir them into a shimmering, shining good time. With the layers of a Philip Glass Etude, the four members of Real Estate craft a timeless feel good record that's as relentless in its way as any metal record. The guitar sound here was chosen for a reason and its legacy is assured. By never wavering from their sound, Real Estate are placing themselves daringly in rock history. Let's see what they do next.

10. The Coathangers - Larceny & Old Lace

I like the idea of Riot Grrrl more than I've ever connected with any of its tentpole albums. I was never a girl in the 90s and so I miss out on the politics to a degree and can't see through the sound to the message as clearly as its proponents. An album with all the hallmarks of that sound but whose style is much more about the No-Wavers of the late 70s? Pull up a chair and tell me about yourself. From the first time I heard them, while filming their performance in Siren Records, the Georgia quartet roared their way into my heart. Half saccharine posturing, half dissonant violence (their named after an illegal abortion, after all), The Coathangers would be a tough listen if the hooks weren't so indelible. The fact that they're adorable in spite of themselves helps too. They have it all, really.

11. The Rapture - In The Grace of Your Love

-If this record had nothing but "Blue Bird" it'd still be on here, but it's also got the typical electro funk fusion I love so much about The Rapture. And of course, it's got Luke Jenner's one-of-a-kind voice. Loving The Rapture means loving Jenner's raspy howl first and the band's dark disco sound a distant second. This time around they prove equally adept at rockers as with their usual Parisian salon electro pop, and thank god. If they'd never written "Blue Bird" my life would be less full.

12. Lisa Hannigan - Passenger

-"Home," the name of the first song, would have made a fine album title. The Irish singer-songwriter's sophomore release is the aural equivalent of laying by a fire in a cabin with the love of your life, boundless potential stretched out in front of you. Her compositions are stronger, her arrangements richer, her sound that much more endearing, her voice as warm and sweet as hot cocoa and soft as snow.

13. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

-Though she has the avant streak of Kate Bush, not to mention the capable voice, Annie Clark's goals are a little different. She's outthinks her rock contemporaries and outplays most of them too, like Thurston Moore doing Philipp Vandre. The hooks occasionally get lost under her dissonant orchestration, but they're there. She's at once more adventurously strange and poppy than on either of her last two records, producing pop gems like "Cruel" and "Cheerleader" and journeys like "Strange Mercy" which meanders through an electronic haze to reach one of her greatest choruses and that's saying something. It was for her that I coined the phrase "Transcendental Pop." She evolves more each time and watching her do so is always important, but the record has joys that even the uninitiated will love.

14. Gauntlet Hair - Gauntlet Hair

-Gauntlet Hair sounds like a demolished apartment building screaming its history in the seven seconds between implosion and full collapse. It shares the lives that have passed through it in abstraction and delivers it in the kind of echo-filled howl you can only hear when you live up the stairs from a passionately argumentative couple. It boils with life and feels loved and hated, angry and content. No other record this year sounded like Gauntlet Hair; rather, the feeling I got listening to it was more of a half-remember conversation, an overheard flirtation, of kids playfully laughing at a public pool. It's the rhythm of life transcribed in crashing symbols and guitar that's stuffed with chorus and reverb.

15. PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

-Again, what could I say that you haven't thought? Harvey's most cinematic and playful release in her life. Like Serge Gainsbourg producing wartime blues, Harvey's found a niche she's never explored, sounding like the kind of thing you'd hear in a tube station during the blitz or at a mod club while David Hemmings tries to solve a murder, but of course much more modern and sexy than that implies.

16. Tom Waits - Bad As Me

-Heart Attack & Vine: The Reckoning.

17. Sonic Youth - Simon Werner A Disparu

-In a cruel twist of fate, an album made for someone else, a movie that most of their fans will never see (indeed that most have never heard of), may wind up being the last Sonic Youth album. If the legendary group doesn't survive the divorce of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, most people will believe (through stubbornness or perfectly understandable ignorance) that The Eternal is their final statement. And in a way it is. It's the last album they grew from nothing. Simon Werner was born out of a truly sexy French film of the same name and so the image spawned the sound (though try watching the film and imagining it without SY's involvement. It's impossible), but as a career summing cap, it would stand if it had to. Though it has the simmering rock of their later records, it also draws heavily from the shimmering slinky sounds of Sister, one of their most under-appreciated records. No one says a word the whole time, they let their guitars and drums talk for them, which is how I'll remember them. Not a rock band, but four people in synch, letting their hands guide their conversation and letting beauty rise to the surface, whether by design or by accident. They might shy if you called them artists to their face; Simon Werner is a minor masterpiece. Whether or not it's their last, it's just as brilliant as any in their canon.

18. Dum Dum Girls - Only In Dreams

-Sticky sweet and lovely as sin, like The Ronettes blasted through a jet engine.

19. Chad VanGaalen - Diaper Island

-Chad will always do precisely what he wants to. His sound is unique and lovely and I hope he never changes.

20. Washed Out - Within & Without

-Diaphanous bedroom music that sounds like lovemaking instead of crying, for once.

Honorary - Thai? Dai! - The Heavier Side of the Luk Thung Underground

- A brilliant compilation of Thai psych music from the 70s. Truly amazing sound.

Nine Types of Light: A study

There are few bands I like as much as TV On The Radio. I once wrote 1800 words on one of their songs when their saxophone player dared me to. Their music has been in either the front or the back of my head since 2004 saw the release of their debut record, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes. It's been with me lately because their newest and most-certainly-on-my-best-of-the-year-list record Nine Types of Light has been plowing through my subconscious leaving debris in its wake that I've been collecting in an attempt to understand it. it came to me a little while ago what I think the album was about though listening to the songs as singular entities kinda erases my assessment in small parts as I come to love the shit out of every song for the unique pleasures they each offer, I stand by my feelings about what the album as a single work of art represents. Note: I've had theories about art in the past, shared them with the artists and been totally wrong. But if I don't talk about them like I was speaking an objective truth it's a lot harder to write.

Dear Science, their 2008 record and the one that endeared them not just to critics but to the NPR set and who made it possible for them to sell out the House of Blues when last they came to boston, was an album about crisis. The walls were coming down, bombs were going off, lovers decided to brave it in bed together making just as much commotion there as the rioters outside. Nine Types of Light is the aftermath. The love is there but it's now being tested through times that neither could have guessed could be so bad. It's easier and more practical to see their world as just the one that we're living in now, but I find both more interesting and a little disconcerting that the idea of this album taking place in a deserted wasteland ruined by man's collective folly and populated by roving be-mohawked gangs and mutants isn't at all out of place. I bet Bayard Rustin and Harvey Milk and Susan B. Anthony all really hoped that by the year 2011, a year that doesn't feel realistic when written down, that people of different sex, race and sexual orientation would be living in harmony at least in fucking america for fuck's sakes. They were mistaken and in that respect we are living in a dystopian society. Turn on the news and you have a reason to throw your tv out the window in mental agony and rage. It's more comforting for me to fictionalize the struggles presented in Nine Types of Light. I place it next to The A-Frames' Black Forest as the second post-apocalyptic album I've encountered.

TV On The Radio's albums have followed a logical progression at least as far as narrative imagery conjured in my head. And is there any other way, really? Ok Calculator was life alone with a four-track, afraid to go outside, imagining what happens in the places you can see from your window. Desperate Youth is the loneliness of stepping outside and seeing modern life, of reflecting on the ugliness of the past, that the few people who share your opinions are all underground, slam poets fingering the triggers of unloaded guns. Return To Cookie Mountain is things starting to shift and not for the better. It's walking through pockets of a city on the verge of a failed revolution, run by a sadist with a child's IQ. People are rioting in the street and buying guns and forgetting how to love each other, forgetting that they need to, that it's more important than eye-for-an-eye retribution and tornados of violence and bombings. Dear Science is when there are just enough people to keep shooting at each other. Prophets are rising in isolated spots trying to sing the gospel of love and peace, but just outside are litter-and-body-strewn streets that paint too ugly a picture to paint over. All you have are people if you're lucky enough to still have them by your side. Nine Types of Light isn't yet at the rebuilding stage. It's the bitterness of people not trying to make things better, of love being all you have to live for. Throughout their oeuvre that's been the one constant, the diamond in the rough, and it's one the heroes of their records finally learned to polish and treasure.

The record starts and ends in a way with "Caffeinated" Consciousness. I'd put money on everyone's eyes being drawn to that title first as I was and noticing that it's an odd choice for album closer (They even called the first song on the album "Second Song" as if "Caffeinated"were there first and then moved at the last second.), but there's a method to it. Tunde Adebimpe evidently also found it slightly out of place there as he put it first in the film he co-directed that puts the album to images. The film that Nine Types Of Light evokes purely in a narrative sense would be either Doomsday or Tobe Hooper's Dance of the Dead, two films not unreasonably forgotten. But what I mean by this is that the world ended when Dear Science ended and now the protagonists are trying to live in melted and empty cityscapes and deserts patrolled by the mutated ghosts of the conservatives who pushed the button and put the statue of liberty up to her tits in sand. "Caffeinated Consciousness" is a way to alert you to the danger and it belongs in the beginning because it's the most instantly memorable song on the album in my opinion because it's one of the first songs that is in a style that TVOTR created for themselves out of many different genres that isn't the style they pioneered and perfected on their second album Return to Cookie Mountain. There's very little characteristic fuzz here, which is why opening the film with "CC" was a wise choice, but there's a line that makes its closing the album make sense. "On/I'm Optimistic! On Overload!" Whether it's "on" or "I'm" ultimately doesn't matter. Some people disagree about it. As we'll see, they both work.

"Second Song" shows Tunde being both more plain and clear than he's ever been, talking his way into the situation. "Confidence and ignorance approve me. Define my day today. I've tried so hard to shut it down, lock it up, gently walk away. Appetites and impulses confuse me." He's essentially talking over something with the listener, confessing the things that might make him slow or weak (human) because in this new world seconds count and you need to be on your toes and know the person your with intimately. Think Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris after leaving Jim's house in 28 Days Later but between two well-meaning and unfailingly nice liberals. "And then the night comes, I'm fiending like a pyro, And I know it stables my survival" it might get you killed but he can't give up his recklessness because "when there's music all around me" he remembers the world as it was. Giving up, being too cautious, forgetting to live, is not an option. Knowing the balance is key. The chorus is an inversion of the chords used in Dear Science's hit "Golden Age" both a signifier of how things have changed, and also an alert, a code or sign to survivors heading for safety. "every lover on a mission, shift your known position, livin' a lie! ...every lover on a mission, shift your known position to the light." There's freedom near by, you just need to know how to get there. You can love in safety and security, instead of in fear. Anyone who's seen enough post-apocalyptic films knows this is too often a mirage.

Lured in by the siren song they venture toward apparent safety. "Keep Your Heart" is both proof that these two will do anything to keep each other safe, but that they don't need whatever safety is being offered. They're too busy making promises to actually get to each other's cores. Though those promises are beautiful "I'm gonna keep your heart if the world all falls apart, I'm gonna keep your heart." This is them making love in a tiny oasis in the desert or an empty but once-well-furnished apartment left mostly intact. A stopover on their journey to a shelter. "You" is them once again on the road, the hot sun on their backs, arriving midway through and discovering the temporary paradise they've been looking for. I picture the kind of comforting debauchery and temporary comforts of most of these situations, an impressive beast until it flashes its even more impressive jaws and things take a turn. They have plumbing, beds, and a lot of like-minded, heavily tattooed survivors there too. This is where the production of the album becomes a crucial factor in interpreting the meaning. Here a thread-bare electric guitar conjures images of deserts and heat and a mock-slide guitar does the rest. There are instruments all over Nine Types of Light that make their first appearances on a TVOTR record and give the impression of having been assembled from what was left after the end came. This is what they had and they're making the most of it (the twelve-string and middle-eastern sounding guitar on "Killer Crane" are two other examples). They're making the most of the destruction. Hence "No Future Shock."

In the Nine Types of Light film, Kyp Malone imagined a dance contest to "No Future Shock," and I agree that there's no better visualization for it, I just put a different set of clothes on them. This is where Dance of the Dead and Doomsday are more helpful than either The Road or The Road Warrior. Those films don't get the bacchanal of those who've lived in nuclear fallout for years, adapting to it. They're more practical (and better movies, but I digress). "No Future Shock" is the revelry of the deranged survivors. The world has ended, they've been forsaken and forgotten, so "Dance! don't stop! Do The No Future Shock!" It's a seductive song (and an impossibly funky song I can't ever get out of my head) and the lovers join in the dance at first. Listening to Kyp Malone bark orders at partiers is too fucking cool to not want to dance to. "Killer Crane" is their life in this new world, professing love and promising that things will get better. The odd sounding guitar is the presence of their new home always beneath all they say and do, the new regulations and laws and the smell of other people who don't remember that things could get better. These two don't belong here because they have too much hope, they just don't see it yet. "Will Do" is doubt peering in through seeming perfection. It's hunger, it's other people taking liberties with you because there's no rule or law or defining moral except what the biggest man says. It's a place run like the talking points on Glenn Beck's chalkboard. Total amorality has its charms and it's tempting to give in to a lot of things. But they don't give up on each other. "New Cannonball Blues" has that perfect menacing quality. So much can have gone wrong. They might have transgressed, they might be on the run, they might be watching proof that these people aren't like-minded seekers of companionship but vampires after helpless mortals. Either way it's bad news, either way it's the blues. "It was written in blood before they wrote it in stone so sing it with me like its your own." There are tests that prove their commitment to the community and they can't do it.

"Repetition" is perfect. It's where the album is at its most dangerous, its most vicious and angry and Road Warrior-esque. "Repetition" of feet on the ground as they go on the run, repetition of the same mistakes that led someone to push the button, repetition of the hate that characterized the world that was obliterated, repetition of the pettiness that defined the creation of the great empires, monarchies, dictators and Fascists of the old world, our world. "I've abused my position, and it cost my friends and if the world keeps spinning I could do it again." The most untrustworthy are always in charge and they always manage to pit people against each other over imaginary lines in the sand. "What's the matter with your next-door neighbor?" When the song reaches it's second act, lights are flashing, vehicles are in motion, guns are going off again, destruction they thought they were done with. They escape, barely, with their lives. They have nothing else, but they had nothing inside either. From a hill, they see the city they've left behind: "Beverly Hills, burning off plastic, scrape it away." Luxury is a lie, comfort only at the price of forced order and cannibalism. "Beverly Hills, Nuclear, what should we wear? And who's for dinner?" The song has a melancholy swagger. They walk once again through the desert, the worst behind them for now, but they have no food, no water, no clothes but what they were, nothing but...each other. "Hold tight. Our love affair is writing our name in the sky...it's paradise." They only wanted safety to sleep next to each other without having to keep one eye open, but frankly having each other is enough. Even if they die from the heat, from starvation, having each other is enough. The story ends and everyone gets to imagine their own ending but Tunde sings on behalf of the author after the fact: "Gone optimistic. We're gonna survive" And so we come full circle. Sure you'd have to be on optimistic to see them living out there on their own, but these guys are optimistic. They have to be. They've been through more than I can even imagine. I have nothing but the profoundest respect, admiration and love for the members of TV On The Radio. A few listens to their album produced this narrative. They're geniuses who bring my brain to places it hasn't gone before and who put you in places of insecurity so that you can find yourself, answer questions you didn't realize were important. "CC" might not be the love song the story needed, but its the one we need. It's a two-chord wake-up call and like the album it closes, it's fucking mind-blowing and more important than any one song on it or any idea I might have about it. It's precious, so keep it close.

R.I.P. Gerard Smith and Tim Hetherington

Gerard Smith died of lung cancer today. He was one of the nicest people I've ever met. I didn't know him well, I only met him once, but he was insanely talented and came by success through ability and hard work. He was a busker, a first responder on 9/11 and finally the bass player for TV On The Radio, making his final public appearance in the Nine Types Of Light movie. Jesus christ I couldn't be any more sorry that he's gone. He joined up with the band just after Desperate Youth & Bloodthirsty Babes hit stores and it was his bass playing that contributed to my interest in the group. I remember being initially turned off by the Staring At The Sun video for some reason and then seeing them perform it on Last Call one night changed my mind. Suddenly they weren't just talented musicians experimenting, they were a real band and through it all Smith was a huge part of their appeal to me. Perpetually turned toward his bass amp as they would rocket through "Staring At The Sun" or "Wolf Like Me" on their many TV appearances, Smith rounded out the group's sound and could do anything they needed him to, keys, guitar, whatever. He was a musical polymath and I'll never forget being able to shake his hand backstage at the Wilbur in late 2008 after their life-changing show had ended. Sarah and I watched from the balcony totally in awe of their stage presence, lucky to be so close, happy to be watching what turned out to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The only thing I can think to communicate how much I loved his musicianship was that I spent hours in my basement playing along to his bass parts while the songs blasted in my ears through headphones. I used to pretend to be Gerard Smith when everyone in my house was asleep. That was one of the ways I dealt with emotional problems. The five members of TVOTR are all insanely modest about their ability, Smith perhaps most of all. My deepest sympathy goes out to everyone lucky enough to have spent time with him or shared a stage with him.

I can't really express how angry it makes me that Tim Hetherington is dead. He was a journalist killed because people are so fucking hateful and stupid and greedy and fucking there is no excuse. There is no reason why people like Hetherington should have any reason to fear ending up like he did. He was there objectively, he had no stake, he wasn't carrying a gun.
This is the last film Hetherington made and though short it is a fitting conclusion to his work as a journalist and filmmaker.

Diary (2010) from Tim Hetherington on Vimeo.

Best Non-Album Songs of the Decade

The AV Club released their best albums of the decade list the other day and aside from my disagreeing with a lot of them (though we had some common ground) what I took issue with was the idea that some of the writers had clearly put aside personal preference in favor of a consensus. As if because they agreed on some of them, that made them the objective choice. That's wrong - these kinds of things are always going to be opinion-based and any ambition to the contrary is just wrong. Anyway, I'm gonna be doing some of my own year-end shit as Rolling Stone and Spin and everyone else unveils theirs (of course, no one will actually read mine, so, whatever...) just to point out that the internet makes all their asses totally goddamn irrelevant cause anyone's opinion can be found to counteract their big old goddamned consensus culture. Fuck that Christmasy Bullshit!

Best Non-Album/Strays/Compilation-Related Music Of The Decade.

Soundtrack Related Original Material:

Special Soundtrack Award to Rufus Wainwright

Rufus Wainwright has given us more single track contributions to soundtracks than perhaps anyone else in the last ten years. He's done covers of some really excellent songs and some super terrible ones, which he then made better. Anyway he gets an award. What's the award look like, you ask? Fuck you for being so materialistic! If you were nicer maybe you'd get a made-up award like Rufus Wainwright. I'm sorry....times are tough...this damned economy.... Specific Songs:

"I'll Build A Stairway To Paradise" - Rufus Wainwright - The Aviator

Martin Scorsese's The Aviator had a shit-ton of cool period specific stuff but Rufus Wainwright's performance was the best bit of pastiche they concocted. Wainwright does a winking/straight rendition of this excellent song at a party while Howard Hughes asks Johnny Weismuller and David O. Selznick if they want to have threeway sex....or something...the movie was a long time ago, the details are blurry.

"Malaguena" - Brian Setzer - Once Upon A Time In Mexico

Brian Setzer's rocking version of the old guitar piece is a touch like the movie it came from: it rocks at first, then gets dull, then Johnny Depp shoots some people even though his eyes have been cut out...you know I don't remember much about this movie, either, other than it sucked, but christmas what an awesome goddamned song!

"To Be Surprised" - Sondre Lerche - Dan In Real Life

Sondre Lerche scoring a romantic comedy made a lot of sense, actually. He does a sort Elvis Costello via Cole Porter impersonation on his less successful records, so to ask him to come up with a half-dozen playfully sad trumpet themes was like asking Damon Albarn to do something unexpected on his next album. Anyway, sandwiched in between some old tracks and a bunch of great snippets that don't amount to a great album was a really excellent pop song that could have been a single in any country if whoever handles Lerche had a goddamned brain in his head. Seriously, how is this guy not an international celebrity? Not that I probably wouldn't hate him if he got famous, but I feel like someone's dropping the ball in the Lerche camp....unless....are you staying unfamous for me...? Sondre....I'm....I'm touched, I don't know what to say....you truly are my hero! (Note: I love Sondre Lerche and would love to see him succeed but remain glad that no one knows him. I'm kind of impossible).

Various - New Moon Soundtrack

If I may be allowed to say how much I fucking take issue with the whole Twilight franchise. Fucking abstinence vampire bullshit! Ok, now that I've said my piece, let's talk about this unfairly excellent soundtrack for New Moon. None of these songs are in the movie (none of the good ones, anyway) but we have not only great songs from Thom Yorke, Bon Iver with St. Vincent, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Grizzly Bear with Victoria Legrand, but great songs from bands that I thought had used up all their good song karma. The Killers, Death Cab For Cutie, Ok Go, Editors, The Magic Numbers (bonus track), Band of Skulls all give great songs as well, and each one seems to harken back to a different era of great songwriting. It's not fair, I tells ya! Why do the goddamned vampire movies get such amazing soundtracks. They don't deserve them! But you really should hear the soundtrack, it's incredible.

Various - I'm Not There

There were a handful of songs on that I'm Not There soundtrack that were just amazing. I figured out a little while ago that Dylan's songwriting is great, it's just that his execution is totally unappealling to me. So an album full of people I like doing his songs sounded like an excellent proposition. The problem with it was that everyone wanted to sound just like him at the end of the 70s, so there was almost no diversity. Luckily Sufjan Stevens, The Swell Season and Sonic Youth were there and totally goddamned rocked the house. Sufjan Stevens should be on every compilation ever, far as I'm concerned; his "Ring Them Bells" is a standout for its wierdness, something the whole record could have done with more of. The Swell Season did a pretty straight run-through of their song so I can't really explain why it works for me the way it does. Finally Sonic Youth's version of the title track is...well, it's the song they were born to play. Cool and haunting and smoky and hip as two independent coffee places, "I'm Not There" came right when Sonic Youth were rediscovering how awesome they are. Then they did that Eternal record which rocks hard enough for three albums.

Weird B-Sides

"Daytona 500 (Iron Lung Remix)" - Ghostface

Ghostface & Radiohead....if you don't go find it you've no future as king/queen of the planet.

"Everything Hits At Once (For Discos)" - Spoon - Amos House Collection Vol. 2

Really the only thing different between the two versions of this song is that instead of keyboard, the disco version used for the Amos House Collection has a thumb piano. And yet, it kinda makes all the difference.

"Eighth Station of the Cross Kebab House" - Belle & Sebastian - Help! A Day In The Life

This song was one of the few standouts from a record that boasted some of Britain's best bands Help! A Day In The Life (Radiohead's rather moody "I Want None of This" being the only thing that comes close. Elbow, Coldplay, Manic Street Preachers and everyone else had no excuse for being so bland...although Antony & Boy George did a pretty ok version of that Lennon tune). As is too often the case for charity records, the songs don't really do it for me, but I'll buy them cause I want to support the cause. This song is a creepy Post-Punk dub track and was the last great thing the band did as far as I can see. What was up with that God Help The Girl record?

"Dearest Foresaken (Live At KCRW)" - Iron & Wine - Passing Afternoon

Two songs do not a great EP make, but this one was so infectious that I let the relative suckage of the Passing Afternoon EP slide. Sam Beam's guitar playing is rarely so impressive and aggressive while never actually getting that loud. The riff in the middle is amazing.

"I Woke Up With This Song In My Head This Morning" - Bright Eyes - Lua

This song, the only thing to write home about on the Lua EP, is really about the happiest damn thing in the world. Lord knows where Conor Oberst got this burst of energy from because it was seated between his two most moody and anxious albums ever (not that I don't love the hell out of his two 2005 records). Anyway, from the chirpy mandolin riff to the scraped guitar solo in the middle, the song is all about embracing but tweaking conventions and it's a joy to hear on winter mornings.

"Satellite" - TV On The Radio - Young Liars

This girl I used to work with put on the Young Liars EP one day and then sort of had her own personal freak-out while the four songs soared through her head and into her blood. Since that day I've always loved "Satellite" and routinely freak out to it's searing guitar and hammering drum machine, not to mention the burning vocals.

"Modern Girls & Old Fashioned Men" - The Strokes with Regina Spektor - Reptilia

Back before teenage girls and the Narnia crowd fell in love with Regina Spektor, I fell in love with her. I showed her off to all my friends, listened manically to Soviet Kitsch and prayed that she'd remain undiscovered (The jokes on the masses, incidentally because her first record in the spotlight was her worst). Anyway, before all that she got herself 15 minutes of fame by appearing on the last great song The Strokes ever wrote (ok, the last one that they wrote that sounded like them). She makes a lovely foil for sleepy Julian Casablancas, wailing away like Dusty Springfield and just generally rocking the house. The music is insanely complicated and almost impossible to hum, which sort of adds to its mystique. The late 60s come back for the few minutes that this song lasts.

"Surf City Eastern Bloc"/"Broken Window" - Arcade Fire

The Arcade Fire are the best band of the last ten years. Disagree with me and we'll have words. Consequently I'm often torn as to which of their songs is the greatest. With B-sides the question is doubly hard because they're each a pretty profound statement. So I pussied out and chose two. Both are apocalyptically heavy, super catchy, driving, politically charged and flat-out awesome. Who the hell else plans a pop song with the National Men's Choir of Prague? These songs basically inspired me to write a 350 page war film that thankfully no one's ever read (good lord it's bad!) but these sons remain evocative and beautifully dark.

"Cuttooth" - Radiohead - Knives Out Single

Radiohead are so good even the songs they cannibalize make the best work of most other bands look like shit. Take "Cuttooth" as an example; fans know it as the song where the chorus of "Myxamatosis" originated. The rest of you will know it only as a truly amazing and beautiful song with an unforgettable piano riff and some of the band's best Brit-pop grooving. If I could ever hear this played in person, you could carry me out in a coffin.

"Everything I Try To Do, Nothing Seems To Turn Out Right" - The Decemberists - Billy Liar

You know, the more Colin Meloy tries to shy away from sounding like The Smiths, the more he sounds to me like The Smiths. Take this, the standout on the Billy Liar EP. There's nothing particularly Smithsy about it, yet I can't help but picture him staring at a Morrissey poster while writing and singing it. It's the ultimate rainy day bedroom song and articulates romantic malaise quite nicely. Colin Meloy doesn't speak frankly about much these days but sometimes when he puts down the book of Japanese folklore and simply lets us know how he's doing, his best work can sometimes come out. I love me some Decemberists, but I think I may have listened to this song more than anything else they've done.

"Tylenol" - Ben Kweller

I seem to like Ben Kweller less and less these days (it's not his fault, I got me a pretty good personal excuse) but one thing I'll always like is this, a stray freebie he put on the internet one day. It starts all strung out and detuned and warbly, then kicks your ass in the last verse. I could see him writing this getting more adament and then running screaming around his apartment with his SG in his arms breaking shit. It's great for driving, getting mad, or thinking about people you're mad at. It angries up the blood in the best way possible. BK ought to write some more rock songs.

"Secret Knives" - Wolf Parade - EP #1

Wolf Parade are one of my favorite bands but they can be hit or miss, their EPs most of all. The early versions of tunes on Apologies to the Queen Mary just make me glad Isaac Brock talked them out of sounding like Giorgio Moroder's evil twin. Those dirty-ass rock songs are pretty excellent, though. "Disco Sheets" and "Lousy Photographs" are eloquent rockers but "Secret Knives" is their best non-album song ever. With the simplest of riffs at the core and Spencer Krug and Hadji Bakara slithering all over the place with their keyboards and Dan Boeckner and Arlen Thompson absolutely murdering the chorus, it's a timeless, disheveled, hotel-destroying rock song.

"Country Gentleman" - Ambulance Ltd. - New English

I'm not that old, but there is now a period of time I can feel nostalgia for. There are bands who have classic line-ups that people will talk about in record stores later that I got to see live and whom I now miss terribly. Ambulance Ltd. is one such band. Between everyone getting quitting and...well, everyone quitting again, Marcus Congleton, Matt Dublin, Ben Lysaght and Darren Becket made one of the best pop records of all time and record a half-dozen great songs that wound up on EPs and in one case, a goddamned jeans website launch. Though "Helmsman' and both "New English" and "Straight 'A's" the two other standouts from the New English EP are all great, their best non-album song is "Country Gentleman" a song that seems to have fallen out of Johnny Marr's songbook. Starting with a super heavy riff on the opening to "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" Congleton croons sweetly, Lysaght's guitar creeps about in darkness and the whole misty affair is simply staggering. There were weeks when this song was all I would listen to. It's like an old pulp novel in a 3 minute pop song.

"The Specialist" - Interpol - Matador at 15

I'm seeing that disappointment and nostalgia kinda go hand in hand...sort of a theme today. Anyway before Interpol sort of lost their touch (though I still like them), they put out a few b-sides as pallet cleansers between Turn On The Bright Lights and Antics that wound being better than a few songs off their second and third albums. Notably "The Specialist" would have fit snugly on Bright Lights but I'm glad they put it aside because it's so epic and strange that it sort of needs to be its own entity. Some of Paul Banks best subway poetry gets put to use here "My love's a laboratory, I set all my pet's free, so baby you should sleep with me." Can't make heads or tails of that bit of logic but what a great, chilly song. Interpol's greatest strength is playing songs that make your breath condensate, even in the middle of the summer and this one may be the best song in their catalog for that particular purpose. Icy, moody and with all manner of tempo changes and strange moaning and razor-like guitar playing.

Wall of Ice - Radiohead

If you're a ravenous Radiohead fan, you knew about the Wall of Ice debacle. Somebody leaked conflicting news stories - that Radiohead would be putting out an EP before Christmas, and that the band would never record an album as long as they lived - at the same time. Naturally we all panicked and some people invented their own website to call us all assholes, which I thought was uncalled for. Ed O'Brien calmed us down a month or so later; they'll be doing records, in fact they're in the middle of one now. The two songs that they had released on the internet had nothing to do with that record, they were just gifts. I bet you guys feel bad about all that bogus website stuff now, don't you? All they were doing was giving your ungrateful asses a gift. And what a gift. "Harry Patch" is the most gorgeous thing I've ever heard and "These Are My Twisted Words" is like distilled Radiohead; their wierdness and coldness in a glass for you to drink like a shot. Total bliss, both of them, and free, too.

...and of course, Dark Was The Night

Yes, no tally of 2009 or it's encompassing decade would be quite complete with paying lip service to this most excellent compilation record. The names do in most cases speak for the record. The wonderfully murky tracks of the New Moon soundtrack are just an extension of the best work here. Sufjan Stevens, Feist, Grizzly Bear, The National (and their two guitarists, who catered the record), Iron & Wine, Stuart Murdoch, Sharon Jones, The Decemberists, Jose Gonzalez all turn in great songs, as do a handful of others. My Morning Jacket, Spoon and Cat Power kinda bring me down, but whatever. Anyway, it's pretty amazing and that all these guys could have phoned it in, but didn't (Spoon did) is a testament to their songwriting prowess. Sufjan Stevens gave one of the best songs he's ever written which showcases both sides of his songwriting. Simply stunning.

Best Stray Cover Songs

"Tower of Song"/"C'est Tujours La Meme Histoire" - Martha Wainwright

Martha Wainwright probably writes great songs, I just haven't heard any of them. What I have heard are her truly awesome cover songs. To turn Leonard Cohen's "Tower of Song" into a soaring, hopeful, angelic tour-de-force is no small feet and she does it with effortless grace. You can hear it on that Cohen tribute album from the film they produced a few years ago, but for my money the version she did on Letterman takes the fucking cake. What a goddamned performance. Now that was already a big deal, but then I found out she was going to be doing a live album of Edith Piaf songs. This girl's got brass, I'll give her that. She came back on TV and played "C'est Tujours La Meme Histoire," and totally killed it. Not only did she sing it just like Piaf, she also had the motions and expressions down; she was channelling Piaf. It was a blast to watch and a pleasure to hear it. Now if that goddamned live record would ever materialize I could maybe hear it again.

"Love Will Tear Us Apart" - The Frames - Live

Though it doesn't exist in record format, this must be heard. There are as many versions of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" as there are days in a year but this is the definitive cover. Between the wistful violin taking over for the rather thin synth line of the original and Glen Hansard's dead-on Ian Curtis (but with a bit of warm Irish heart in place of Curtis' cold Manchester one) their version of "Love" really gets at why the song is so great in a way I never quite felt while listening to the remaining studio versions of the original. The Frames fill out the sound and give a fitting epic rendition of a classic song.

"Wonderful/Song For Children" - Rufus Wainwright - War Child

And speaking of that family of canadian songsmiths, Rufus Wainwright gave what is arguably the best performance on the War Child album (I do love TV On The Radio doing 'Heroes', but Wainwright's is a touch more audacious). Starting at first with just a guitar, he goes wild on the chorus and breaks out the...muted trumpet. It sounds better than it sounds. Anyway, he knocks his Brian Wilson impersonation out of the park and sort of proves that he's the Beach Boy's Heir Apparent. After you've heard it, you'll swear the arrangement was fuller because you're left so satisfied, so you keep going back for more.

Violent Femmes as played by Guster

MTV2 had some great ideas for a few years there but they also notoriously let none of them flourish and were soon showing pornographic anime and a shit-ton of commercials almost exclusively. Reviving Headbanger's Ball? Awesome. Allotting 20 minutes to indie music a week and the rest to Aeon Flux? Insulting. One of their best ideas, which they killed in infancy, was the show Album Covers. The premise: one band records a classic album by another band that they admire. As far as marquee value goes a 2004 Guster and Dashboard Confessional were not great choices (if you're asking me, and if you've read this far, you are, Dashboard is a horrible idea any year and most likely sank the project like a stone). I love Guster and they were at the tail-end of that period where they made no mistakes, so hearing them play all of The Violent Femmes first album was a fucking blast. I went out the next day and bought an acoustic bass, I was so enamored of their performance. To see melodic Newman/Simon disciples like Guster bringing the ruckus on these old songs was a blast but MTV2's invisibility and irrelevance tell me that the whole record is never going to see the light of day, which is a crime.

"Walking the Cow" - TV On The Radio/"King Kong" - Tom Waits - The Late, Great Daniel Johnston

In 2004, Daniel Johnston was still relatively underground. Some folks got together and recorded a whole album's worth of his songs, alongside the originals, and I think together with the movie The Devil & Daniel Johnston the mumbly schizophrenic's days in the dark are now over. Anyway, Johnston, it turns out, is not my cup of tea, but two of these songs stood out among everyone else's. TV On The Radio's version of "Walking the Cow" looks at Johnston under a brand new microscope, like scientists examining a fossilized mosquito; it's still weird but we now understand it. Plus their dead-pan delivery and vocal cluster bring out new depths from the tune. Tom Wait's take on "King Kong" is really a show-stopper. Five minutes of howling and jagged guitar, it was the perfect companion piece to the master's recently released album Real Gone. "King Kong" was a rare glimpse into Waits' record collection. Needless to say, I paid rapt attention and was not disappointed by his earth-rumbling performance.

"Mother Nature's Son" - Honeychurch - Save Siren Records

I await the next Honeychurch record in the same way I imagine girls in the mid-60s awaited the next time The Beatles would come to town. With every passing year since 2004's Honeychurch Makes Me Feel Better I feel more anticipation about the next record from the Doylestown whiskeyfolk revival band (Larissa and Shilough had a baby, so I of course understand why we don't have a new record to listen to). I got tiding over in the form of the Early Times compilation and their cover of "Mother Nature's Son" by the Beatles, recorded for a compilation to raise money to save Siren Records from going under. Now, The Beatles are like Dylan to me. I appreciate them and like their songs but only when other people play them. They gave us blank slates and it's up to future generations of songwriters to make truly great art out of them. The song is already nice but Honeychurch make it awesome. Shilough Hopwood's vocals on this track feel tailor made for the words and melody. This song is flooring, gorgeous, just amazing. I love Shilough's voice on a good day, but here it's just...man, oh man. Anyway, if you can find it somewhere, run don't walk. And in the meantime, I wait for a new record.

We should do the best records/films of the decade/year in the coming weeks here at Film Punk, so stay tuned.

Nat Baldwin Kills It At Hampshire College

Well Hampshire may not be for everyone (about half of the people who go there figure out that what they actually want is a lot of guidelines because when they were kids their parents weren't strict enough with them, but there was always an emphasis on getting good grades, and then they just acted disappointed more than anything when you came home with a C in the sixth grade, and so you'd be happier at UC Berkeley), they do have a penchant for bringing in really sweet musicians for unconventional sets.

This video from 420Fest showcases Nat Baldwin's ability to hold a room in the palm of his hand, even while supporting an enormous upright bass. Baldwin is one of my favorite singer songwriters, and it's possibly because he writes and plays them all on that gorgeous upright bass without using a loop pedal. He's remarkably talented and his songs are all a little out of the ordinary but are just the right blend of sharp, strange and melodic enough to satisfy fans of The Arcade Fire, TV On The Radio, Andrew Bird, or Lou Reed. Baldwin did a stint as a member of Dave Longstreth's excellent, frantic band Dirty Projectors and he'll be joining them again for their summer tour and possibly beyond. Both bands are on the myspace and beyond. Dirty Projectors start a North American tour supporting TVOTR on the 22nd of May in Oakland, then they arch north and come back down to New York on the 5th of June, and then keep going south to Charlotte, NC on the 11th of June. Their new record Bitte Orca comes out on June 9th. Baldwin's solo records can be found here.

The Songs are: Lifted, Real Fakes, Extended Weed Jam Solo, and Weights.
His Myspace

3 Pages on One Song

Essay on DLZ
Song by TV On The Radio
Commissioned by Stuart Bogie

You could be on an empty city street after all the people have left. Trash and old newsprint flutters around the street in a feverish wind and hits telephone polls and overturned trash bins. There’s evidence that people may have been here in the recent past, but they aren’t here now. You could be the last survivor in the dirty, moist hallways of a post-H.R. Giger spaceship, stuck in a nihilistic alien parable. You could miles underground, the last of your or any other people, just waiting. Looking around corners, feeling the moisture collecting in pools, watching everything rust. You could be driving on an abandoned highway toward some perilous errand or other, the yellow lines passing beneath your headlights monotonously. Your mind is heavy, you’re very alone. All of these images, these places in the subconscious can be reached with precisely three chords and a hip-hop drum beat that can be described as a lot of things, first and foremost: aggressive. Before the lyrics, before Tunde Adebimpe’s haunting falsetto, before Gerard Smith’s organ, before Katrina Ford’s catchy, yet foreboding “lah-lah-lah”s, before the whistling that sounds like it was recorded over your grave, before anything else, there are three low, low notes on a keyboard and a drum beat.

TV on the Radio might be said to be professionals at mastering atmosphere. Their songs are hard to peg as being a part of one particular style; on any given TV on the Radio record you’ll find a hybrid of R&B, goth rock, post-punk, funk, and hip-hop, and yet you’ll be no closer to describing their overarching sound. One thing has been true from the start, however, and that is that the music of this Brooklyn band always elicit feelings and images. Any given TV on the Radio song will put you in some place new and different in your mind. The droning beauty of “The Wrong Way” or the furious chorus of “Wolf Like Me” can take any listener to a lot of very dark places and they will undoubtedly have a damn good time exploring them. Their latest album, Dear Science, takes a less forward approach to their usual mood creation. Instead of the soundtrack to a film about the end of the world, Dear Science seems to the playlist used at the party before that same end. Much more upbeat funk and soul influences come through than the mindbendingly excellent gloom they’d perfected. A stylistic shift like this one is welcome, of course, but it’s also a welcome relief to know that not every song is completely different; I did like those spookier songs. And so on Dear Science there are a few songs that capture that older sound that many fans may pine for after the psychedelic funk of side A. Foremost among those tracks that bring back a doom-laden nostalgia is DLZ.

DLZ is, as it’s lyricist and creator Tunde Adebimpe puts it, a testament to death’s lasting effects. His lyrics strive to correct the idea that after death, your legacy is done with and you can no longer achieve anything. Anyone who, like Adebimpe, lost a friend or someone close, knows this to be false. The subject matter is very heavy and in most other hands would probably be either a slow-burning post-rock ballad or a sparse, introverted tune on a battered acoustic guitar delivered coldly and nervously. Adebimpe’s take is quite different and takes on a much angrier quality than most songwriters do when Death is the subject. Injected with Adebimpe’s slick enunciation, confident delivery and the sheer musicality of his voice, DLZ is a tough song. His opening words, delivered lightly, are cryptic; if their meaning isn’t immediately clear, certainly the message is. Adebimpe’s seething near-whisper betrays his mood even if his words don’t. “congratulations on the mess you made of things, On trying to reconstruct the air and all that brings. And oxidation is the compromise you own, but this is beginning to feel like the dog’s lost her bone”. It would appear as though Adebimpe is playing devil’s advocate, fueling his own argument. Congratulations seems to mock the subject of his berating, and oxidation immediately brings up corpse imagery; despite your best efforts, you now rot, every second you’re body lies underground, death takes its toll on your human form. Thus all you’ve achieved is as impermanent as your earthly flesh.

At about this time, that spooky organ begins it’s dance behind the drums, conga, and that same three chord synth-bass line. Death must surely be the topic of debate; if you isolate that great organ line, you might just see skeletons dancing jovially about a bonfire. “You force your fire then you falsify your deeds, your methods dot the disconnect from all your creeds. And fortune strives to fill the vacuum that it feeds, But this is beginning to feel like the dog's lost her lead” This line is a bit tougher to read, but hypocrisy is still on tap. The disconnect from all your creeds could refer to the contradictory views on death in most cultures, especially those cultivated and kept in America. In my hometown, a priest who had spent a lifetime telling widows and orphans that god had sorted it all out in a master plan couldn't handle his own grief when his brother passed away late in his life. Suddenly, his life's work seemed as shambolic as a circus fortune teller. He didn't have the answers, he was just as alone as anyone else. Worse still, what did it mean that he labored over his own personal tragedies but had swept so many lives under the rug? Did these people not mean as much as the life he had lost? No, the families of the deceased whom he had spoken to beforehand just got cheated. Some of that anger seems apparent on this song.

"This is beginning to feel like the long-winded blues of the never" His pronunciation becomes assured and quick. The word never means a lot. The music matches him beat for beat, getting louder as he gets angrier. Who can say that you will never mean anything? Who can say for sure that something will 'never' happen? "This is beginning to feel like it's curling up slowly and finding a throat to choke." He spits out words like accusations at a trial all volume and fire. Death must take someone, it comes to all of us. Someone close to him. "Barely controlled locomotive consuming the picture and blowing the crows, the smoke." Death is a train now. Crows, those that haunt cemeteries, smoke all that remains once it has taken any lingering hope of legacy, burned it as fuel and continued on its way, your memory not formidable enough to stave off becoming what all people become - dust. "Static explosion devoted to crushing the broken and shoving their souls to ghost."As if it needed to be said - death. You will be forgotten. The musical elements - organ, drums, percussion, the backing vocals, a new screaming ghost-like synth line in the back of it all - all whirling around each other behind Adebimpe's mighty cries. Nearly deafening in it's combined power. "Eternalized. Objectified. You set your sights so high." To want to achieve immortality is but the wish of a immature child. "But this is beginning to feel like the bolt busted loose from the lever." An error to be corrected, nothing special.

Just when things seem at their peak - volume, anger, argument - then comes the gut punch that carries you to the end of the tune. Quiet, the eye of the storm and then Adebimpe roars out like every kid killed before his time - the choir of the unsatisfied dead. "Never you mind Death professor" like a circular saw tearing through the notion of the afterlife and every frocked consoler who champions forgetting and moving on. "Your structure's fine, My dust is better" more bitter sarcasm as the volume reaches its peak. Your way of looking at things is the superior one to mine, that I'm dust and nothing more is acceptable. I should just move on. "Your victim flies so high All to catch a bird's eye view of who's next." Heaven exists simply so that you look down onto Earth and see which of your friends will be turned to dust next. Your life on earth is just a stepping stone - now get over it. This childish world view, designed to get children to behave has infuriated intellectuals for centuries - Adebimpe's concern is simply voiced louder. Loud enough for all to hear. "Love is life, My love is better." The horns come in beneath it all like the voice of the long dead joining in on the indictment of millions of years of backwards thinking. "Eyes could be the diamonds Confused with who's next" Who shall go next? "Your shocks are fine, My struts are better. Your fiction flies so high, Y'all could use a doctor Who's sick, who's next?" The doctor quip could be a few things - those who believe in death being the next stop could need their head examined. Those who think that they should lay down and wait for death as it grants all our wishes could also use a physician to slow the decaying down. The end draws near. "Electrified, my love is better It's crystallized, so am I. All could be the diamond Fused with who's next," My love is crystallized and I am too. Like a mosquito encased in amber, all your feelings, impact, interests, passion, all of it encased forever; it is unmoving and affects no one. You're body and everything you've done are at rest never to move again.

The message has been sent, we must now receive it. The music quiets and things return from the crazed heights they'd just reached. "This is beginning to feel like the dawn of a loser forever". Perhaps birth, perhaps death. Dawn of a loser forever. Anyone who feels life is secondary to the afterlife? Anyone who died believing they meant nothing on earth and shall forever mean nothing? Anyone who, with that in mind, decided never to make anything of themselves? Anyone who thought the love they gave in their lifetime, the skin they touched, the lives they've changed, wouldn't last longer than the seconds it takes to bury them? Adebimpe repeats the line again and again as things fizzle out, as things die. The message, the song, the voice, will live on even after everyone dies.