Pedro the Christian.

One of my favorite bands over the past 2-3 years has been Pedro the Lion. From the first time that I heard It’s Hard to Find a Friend, I was in love. The laid back style, the brilliantly descriptive lyrics, and the dreamy vocals all appealed to me in ways that few bands have before and since.

But after listening to them for a while, a lot of people starting mentioning to me things like “yeah, they’re that Christian band. Fuck that,” and other things of the like. Now, I’m not a Christian. I’m fairly agnostic, leaning towards atheism. I have a lot of problems with the way Christianity works, as do a lot of people who grow up in small church towns where everybody there hates each other and gossips as if it’s their job to do so. But the music of Pedro the Lion never really struck me as Christian music, despite the fact that Bazan is a strict Christian and that there are many religious allusions in his music.

To me, Christian music is something that sets out to convert people. Music that constantly needs to invoke the word of God similarly to the way that Ian MacKaye sets out to invoke the word of sobriety. Nothing wrong with either one, but to those that drink or smoke pot, straight edge music may not appeal to others, just like Christian music won’t appeal to those that aren’t Christians. Christian music is much more obedient to Christianity. It’s not about asking questions. It’s about following.

And Pedro the Lion/David Bazan is not about that. In fact, I’d say that David Bazan does a better job at explaining the downfalls of Christianity in a way that few others have been able to do. He does it with a clarity and knowledge that even bands like Bad Religion, whose frontman has a PH.D and wrote his thesis on atheism, have trouble doing. My theory is that because religion is so close to Bazan’s heart that he has an intimate knowledge that others may not have. Look at it this way: a democrat criticizing the Democratic party would have much more bite to it because it’s coming from an insider, right? So a Christian criticizing Christianity means more than an atheist doing so.

One Pedro the Lion song that hit me extra hard in terms of the way it took on religion was “Suspect Fled the Scene” off of It’s Hard to Find a Friend:

Old friend
Your horse is ready to ride when morning comes
From this church town
Where damning rumors drip from holy tongues

And it won’t go away
It won’t go away
It won’t go away

Fever to find the scapegoat fast and fix the blame
I know you never meant to leave the way you came

And it won’t go away
It won’t go away
It won’t go away

Looking down from that stain glass steeple
They’ll never know why you had to run

Ride as fast as you can
They’re shooting to kill

I’ve always seen this song as an attack on exactly the thing that caused me to start questioning religion. In a small church town, everyone that goes to said church knows everything about each other. Because of this, people begin to judge, gossip, and generally treat others like dirt because they feel that they aren’t nearly pious enough to be allowed to worship with them. Rather than helping others to become better people, they talk about them behind their backs. All the good, moral churchwives convene and inform the others of who that they should look down at, who they should ignore, and who is undeserving of going to their church. People don’t take the time to understand why someone isn’t as faithful as everyone else, or take the time to understand why they may be questioning their beliefs. Because to the types of people that fill these churches, all that matters is whether or not you’re as good as they are.

Being in an environment like that is more or less what drove me away from religion. You can only sit and watch so many sermons about brotherly love and helping those among you fall onto deaf ears, speeches given to those that have no desire in actually listening to them because outside of that little room, the actual teaching of the Bible do not matter, only who looks like they follow the teachings the best.

Of course, I’d have to be an idiot if I thought all religious people and churches worked this way. Assuming that a small subgroup of people represent the motives of an entire movement is wrong. I’m really not anti-Christian, but when you’re brought up in a church that didn’t stand by it’s own beliefs, having the kind of adverse reaction that I had is expected.

Pedro the Lion articulate that in a way that even the most famously atheistic bands can’t do. Being an insider bashing the same institution or group that they’re inside gives it an extra bite, an extra umph. This is why I really don’t think you can call Pedro the Lion a Christian band. A Christian band wouldn’t attack Christianity in such a poignant way, would it? A Christian band would probably try their best to avoid such an attack, and focus on the positive aspects of faith.

That doesn’t mean a Chrisitan band might not deal with a personal struggle over faith. In fact, I’m willing to bet that plays a significant part in Christian rock lyrics. Every Christian, no matter how devoted they are, will go through a period of questioning their own faith, and music is usually and outlet for those kinds of personal crises.

I’m not bashing Christian rock. Personally, I don’t like most of it, but it does have benefits and positive aspects to it, especially to those that have some sort of faith. But at the same time, calling a band a Christian band usually has pretty big significance to it. Calling a band a Christian band is a way to kill off 50% of the band’s fanbase and then add another 50% of peole that used to hate them. Which is exactly why people like myself discuss which bands are Christian and which aren’t, or which bands discuss faith and which don’t. It’s an important issue in life and in music.

Now listening to: The Minutemen- What Makes a Man Start Fires

Why I’m Not Voting in the Primaries.

The last two elections have been similar: one party is fighting against another despite the fact that there’s no clear frontrunner. The majority of the candidates are all running against another candidate rather than running for something, and thousands of people are telling you that if you don’t vote, then you’re a douchebag and you’re harming the country. Well, my friends, I have decided not to vote in the Ohio primary, which is today. And if you’ll all gather around the campfire, I’ll tell you why!

I’m a pretty firm believer in the idea that if you don’t stand for something, you shouldn’t pretend that you do just to fit in or do what everyone says is right. For example, if you don’t feel strongly either way about abortion, marching in an abortion rally probably isn’t the best thing for you to, right?

And voting really has pretty big implications to it. When you cast a vote for a candidate, you’re telling the world that you want that person to run the country. It’s not like you’re saying “hey, I’d totally have a beer with this guy,” or any other insignificant thing like that, you’re casting your opinion about who would do the best job leading the country. So voting is not something to take lightly. You shouldn’t vote against another candidate, and you shouldn’t vote unless you feel strongly about a candidate, right?

And as of right now, I’m not too confident in any of the candidates running. This election has been nothing more than a giant hodge-podge of candidates all running because on weak platforms that are either unoriginal or borrowed from other candidates. And as far as the guys who actually get/got a significant amount of coverage, they’re probably the worst of the bunch. Richardson, who was easily the best Democratic nominee when he was still running, was completely ignored by the media in favor of Obama, Clinton, and Edwards, only because they’re more well-known, not because of their actual ideas and platforms.

On the Republican side, it has been and was simply pathetic in terms of candidates this whole election. Giuliani, who promised to 9/11 your 9/11 with his 9/11, was using the Bush tactic of trying his best to scare the nation into voting for him, while Romney decided to be the Republican version of John Kerry. Let’s also not forget the amazing shrinking Mike Huckabee, whose stump speech about “vertical politics” has been given more times than shitty gift cards for Christmas. McCain, the current frontrunner, has essentially sold out his own belief system and started to embrace the policies of a president who routinely disrespected and insulted the senator in order to get elected, as well as keep using illegal torture. All the while, our wacky political grandpa Ron Paul spends his time shouting strange things about how the Department of Education is destroy America and wasting tax money by existing.

Right now, the candidates that I’ve been looking at the most are McCain, Paul, and Obama. McCain is still a pale imitation of his former glory but that former glory is so strong that I’m still tempted to vote for him, Paul is 50% amazing ideas and 50% crackpot on a level even more insane that Michael Savage, and Obama. Oh where to begin with Obama.

I first heard about Obama when the elections were just getting started. The news networks, people I knew, and everyone else were talking about how amazing Obama was. According to them, he was something completely different in a politician. He was fresh, new, and dammit he can change the whole system.

So naturally by the time I actually got to see Obama speak on TV, I was pretty excited. I wanted to see what all of this hype was about. I would learn pretty soon that this hype was pretty ill-informed. Everything he said I had heard before. He gave the same broken promises given by every other candidate I’ve ever seen run for office, aside from Crazy Ron Paul. The same bullshit about keeping lobbyists out of Washington, bringing the country together…it’s all been said before millions of times. What makes Obama different? Nothing.

Obama’s fanbase may possibly be the most annoying fanbase of any politician since Bush’s “LOVE IT OR GET THE FUCK OUT, FAGGOTS” base in 2004. Supporting Obama has become the new trend on college campuses, right up there with North Face Jackets, Dane Cook, and pizza. Most of these people actually don’t know why they support Obama, but they support him with an almost religious dedication. Question Obama’s integrity? Your ass will get jumped all over. Say “well, I kind of agree with Hillary on this issue,” you won’t hear the fucking end of it.

This kind of fanatical support is somewhat scary when you actually sit down to think about it. Blindly standing behind a person, following them without questioning them regardless of knowing why…all of this is exact same thing that let Bush, Reagan, and some of the other worst presidents in U.S. history get away with what they did. I’m not saying that Obama is going to be a horrible president and misuse all of this power, but at the same time, he could easily have the potential based on how fanatic his fanbase is. It all mirrors the Bush fanbase circa 2004, and well all know exactly how that worked out.

Right now, the most important issue that candidates need to address is the illegally increased presidental power that Bush, Cheney, David Addington, John Yoo, and Karl Rove gained in the past 8 years. With the way the powers of checks and balances have been eroded, our next president has the ability to take the presidency into dangerous areas of imperial power. Essentially, the president could become a king. No candidate running has addressed this issue. Oh sure, Obama and Clinton have named checked warrantless wiretapping, but there’s so much more than that that needs to be fixed. And voting a president in office without asking them hard questions about this issue is one of the worst things we can do, especially one like Obama who, according to his supporters, is above being questioned.

Do I think Obama would make a bad president, the kind that would seize power just because he can? Not really, but at the same time, he hasn’t done anything to really prove that he isn’t. And I refuse to vote for someone that won’t answer such an important issue.

Currently listening to: Tortoise- TNT

Death Cab for Juno.

This winter, Fox Searchlight pictures released yet another movie in their “quirky indie comedy” department. The movie was called Juno. It was about a girl who gets pregnant, and chances are you’ve seen it. Because if you haven’t, I’m surprised, seeing as I don’t know a single person who hasn’t at this point. These kinds of “quirky indie comedies” have become quite the new trend. Little Miss Sunshine, Garden State, and Juno have all become smash hits among the teenage crowd over the past years, and honestly, I’m getting slightly worried.

None of these three movies were actually that bad. As a Steve Carrell fan, I enjoyed Little Miss Sunshine, and I did like most of Juno despite some horrible dialouge…I swear if I ever hear the saying “honest to blog” in real life, someone will end up in some serious pain…but it wasn’t all that bad. Garden State, however, generally sucked and has to be one of the most overhyped comedy/dramas in recent years. But this isn’t even what bugs me.

What bugs me is the increasing trend of the “indie ____ (fill in the blank)”. Fill the blank with movie, music, TV show, or whatever else you’d like. For example, if you’d like to put “mittens” in there, that could work too. Anyway, “indie” as a genre is generally a false term. Looking at “indie” rock as a whole genre is wrong. Saying that, for example, Boredoms and Iron and Wine are in the same genre is just not true. “Indie” is a blanket term describing a musical or artistical aesthetic. An aesthetic that exists outside of the maintream terms of art such as movies and film. Independent films or music is generally more daring and creative when compared to it’s mainstream counterpoints. It’s the difference between Ben Folds and The Fray. Ben Folds is willing to try out new ideas, experiment, and challenge himself and his audience. The Fray want to give you pre-packaged crap that you’ve heard a million times before.

That’s exactly what you’re getting with movies like Juno. All the producers behind the movie did was dillute the colors a bit, throw a few references to Sonic Youth and the Melvins, all underscored with a soundtrack by Belle and Sebastian, Cat Power, and the Moldy Peaches. Aside from that, the movie is as conventional as everything else being pumped into your theater. Again, that’s not to say it’s a bad movie, but it’s also not what it advertises itself as. A real, genuine independant movie would not be screening at your local multiplex. You’d have to dig deep to find it. Juno, however, is playing at your local multiplex. And not due to word of mouth alone.

The reason this bugs me is that you know after the success of Juno that we’re going to start seeing more and more of these “quirky indie comedies”. And with every single one of those, a little bit about what makes the indie aesthetic so interesting will be muddled together with something that’s really just the usual mainstream dressed up in indie clothing. This is when the “indie” aesthetic become compromised into a trendy new style, being sold to the masses via generic teen flicks that use soundtracks that include Built to Spill, Iron and Wine, and Minus the Bear to build up some “indie cred”. Personally, none of these movies will ever get “indie cred” until they feature something like Xiu Xiu in the soundtrack. I would kill to hear “Fabulous Muscles” or “Boy Soprano” being played over a scene of a quirky teenager walking doing the street doing quirky things.

When you start selling indie as a trend, as a style, or as anything more than a general aesthetic, that cheapens it a little bit. This October, I went to see David Bazan play a show in Cleveland, and every fucking kid there was dressed the exact same: faded jeans, incredibly tight button up checkered shirts, those weird conductor hats worn slightly sideways, and every single one of them had that awkward looking beard thing doing on. Anyone who wasn’t dressed like that got glared at. Where the fuck is the community, the feeling of “we all like the same music, we all connect with it”? It’s slipping away to make room for fashion statements and indier than thou attitudes that essentially killed other underground aesthetics such as punk rock, metal, and no wave. This is what happens when an aesthetic starts to begin being sold to people as something else. It become diluded into something else, something much more unpleasent.

The idea that you have to dress or look a certain way to listen to independent music only arose after it became a mainstream commodity, with indie-lite bands being sold to teenage kids through TV shows like The O.C. and other generic teen dramas. Only once marketing companies started saying “hey, that fat douche from Death Cab For Cutie dressed like this! We could sell that to people!” did it start to stop being an aesthetic and start being a genre, a description of a style of mid-tempo pop music.

Mainly, the reason this bothers me is because of the fact that indie music, unlike so many other underground music scenes, has existed for years without really being compromised in any major way. While various movements of the indie scene such as punk rock, grunge, or industrial start to grow in size and become mainstream genres, the movement as a whole had never really been brought up into the spotlight. Attention was paid to specific generes, not the aesthetic as a whole. And this is why the scene was able to constantly evolve and re-charge itself every couple of years. When R.E.M. and Sonic Youth became popular, the Red House Painters and Pavement took over to create new styles of independant music. When they got popular, Elliott Smith and Pedro the Lion stepped up to do their part. It’s a constant process that worked because indie was never seen as an actual genre, just a general outline on how the bands approached their style. “Indie” was just anything under the radar rather than a sound.

This changed around 2004 when Death Cab For Cutie began growing in popularity after the success of the Postal Service as well as the use of Death Cab on various bland teen soap operas. Death Cab had long been the darlings of the underground, something which baffles the mind since they’ve never been much more than mediocre despite the massive amounts of buttlove that Something About Aeroplanes, We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes, and Transatlanticism got from the indie community.

Death Cab are the musical version of Juno: Death Cab were never much more than a low-fi version of most generic alternative rock bands. While most of their albums are at least listenable, some of them even have songs that I do readily admit to liking quite a bit, they’re still nothing really that special or unique. Yet people that don’t really listen to indie music proclaimed them to be one of, if not the, most amazing and creative indie bands to ever exist. This, of course, is not true. Because of Death Cab’s relative safeness, they became superstars when they jumped to a major label and released Plans, an album that stylistically does nothing different than their early work, but has better production value, and apparently this is the same as being either amazing or horrible, depending on who you’re talking to. Anyway, when Death Cab blew up and became one of the biggest bands in rock during 2005, they became synonomous with indie. This, of course, is what’s killing indie.

Death Cab’s sound has now become the standard sound of what people think indie should sound like. This, in turn, leads to other bands developing a sound similar to this in order to reach further mainstream popularity. And like all rapidly growing snowballs, this leads to more and more bands trying to sound like this, which makes people think that indie has a unifying sound, which in the classic sense, it does not. In turn, this makes indie much more marketable to the masses. No longer will people have to know the difference between post-rock and twee-pop, because those terms are irrelevant. Indie is no longer an aesthetic, but mid-tempo pop music being made by guys wearing checkered shirts.

Now that indie can be sold, there’s a chance that it may die out to some degree. People may grow tired or irritated with it, and stop trying to discover new bands because they get tired of the more watered down stuff. I know speaking about myself personally, I held out on modern indie music because I assumed that it all sounded like Death Cab. I was wrong in my assumption, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not the common assumption being made.  And that doesn’t mean that there can’t be anything done about it.

It’s not that I’m the snob who doesn’t want anyone new to listen to my music, or the person who doesn’t like when bands I listen to get popular. I really do generally enjoy that I know someone who went out and bought If You’re Feeling Sinister by Belle and Sebastian after seeing Juno, and I like knowing that friends of mine are listening to good music like Sonic Youth and The Apples in Stereo rather than crap like Nickleback and Hinder. But at the same time, I do dislike when something that I deeply care about gets misrepresented and sold as a package by people who don’t understand it to people that understand it even less. And it’s not even that I dislike the idea of people getting into good music through listening to stuff like Death Cab or seeing shitty movies like Garden State. Hell, I got into punk/indie/alternative/ect. by listening to Blink 182 and Green Day in Junior High. Like I said, I just dislike when something gets misrepresented and called something that it isn’t.

Currently listening to: The Sea and Cake- One Bedroom.

Albums You Hate by Bands You Love.

Most bands that have a longish career will have at least one album that fans of the band, critics, and others detest as the worst of their career. Some will disagree and say that the albums are brilliant pieces of misunderstood art while others will bash away to their heart’s content. And like most music nerds, I have heard/owned my share of these albums. Let’s discuss some of the most hated albums by bands that generally do not suck, shall we?

 

1.) Sonic Youth- NYC Ghosts and Flowers.

While Sonic Youth started out as an avant-garde noise band who used noise and freeform jamming to sculpt and create moody soundscapes, a lot changed between their debut full length Confusion is Sex and their 2000 release NYC Ghosts. In the almost 20 years between, Sonic Youth evolved into a variety of different styles, from the epic, dense indie rock stylings of their classic Daydream Nation, the stripped down rock of Dirty, and the aggressive psychadelic of A Thousand Leaves, they essentially left the avant-garde behind them, working on ways to experiment within the scope of a strandard rock song. With NYC Ghosts, the band attempted to return to their avant-garde roots with a noisey, experimental album.

Unfortunately, as most fans of experimental music know, when experimentation goes wrong, it goes completely wrong. With NYC Ghosts, the rough edges to do not mesh well with an overall consistant theme or idea, unlike the band’s earlier work, making some of the experimentation pointless. There is no real mood cast upon the listener to make the strange, difficult song structures worthwhile. It’s not a totally horrible album…the opening track “Free Ctiy Rhymes” is incredibly pretty while the title track is a reminder of what Sonic Youth’s experimentation can do when it’s done right.

 Overall, C-

2.) The Pixies- Trompe Le Monde

The Pixies’ final album is criticized for a lot of things: being a poppier album than anything they’ve done before, essentially being a Frank Black solo album, and overall not hitting as hard as the band’s first 3 albums. And while much of that is true- the album does sound similar to much of Black’s solo work, the album is not nearly as immediate as the nearly perfect trio of Surfer Rosa, Doolittle, and Bossanova- it does not deserve a lot of criticism that it gets.

It’s really a solid album full of strong rock songs. Yes, the songs do not stand out for being as unique as anything off of the band’s first 3 albums, but let’s face it, few bands will write songs as good as those, which is why you must look at Trompe Le Monde for what it is while ignoring the context in which it came out. Songs like “Trompe Le Monde”, “Alec Effiel”, and “U-Mass” rank among some of the catchiest rock tracks ever recorded. The album is much more diverse than any other Pixies’ album before it. Surfer Rosa consisted mainly of aggressive alternative rock, Doolittle was an album full of twisted and tortured pop songs, and Bossanova basically did to surf music what Doolittle did to pop-rock. Trompe, on the other hand, is a well-picked mix of the three styles. Aggressive alternative rock (“The Sad Punk”), catchy, twisted pop-rock (“Planet of Sound”), and surf-inspired hard rock (“Letter to Memphis”). That kind of diversity makes the album lack a consistant mood, but at the same time, it helps keep it from getting boring or tedious.

Overall score: B+

3.) R.E.M.- Around the Sun

Ever since drummer Bill Berry left the band in 1997, R.E.M. have been accused with jumping the shark on every album they’ve released since. But some R.E.M. fans, myself included, have stood up for the band despite accusations of going stale. I disagreed with critics who called UP dull and uninspired. I thought it was a beautifully written album that expressed discontent and desolation in a way that few albums do. I disagreed with those that said that R.E.M. simply phoned-in the songs on Reveal, which I insisted was a great concept album and did an excellent job recreating the feeling of summer.

But, I have to admit that I cannot defend Around the Sun. On Around the Sun, R.E.M. do sound stale, old, and tired. Despite a handful of songs- “Leaving New York,” “Aftermath,” and “The Worst Joke Ever,” most of the album sounds like radio friendly adult-contemporary. In fact, “Wanderlust” may be one of the most embarassing song R.E.M. has ever recorded. However, much of this does owe to the album’s production. Last October when R.E.M. released R.E.M. Live, I noticed that the versions of “The Boy in the Well,” “Final Straw,” and “Make It All O.K.,” were much better on the live album. They didn’t sound nearly as tired or worn out, and sounded like the powerful, passionate R.E.M. we all know and love. So maybe it was the production that caused the album to feel like it dragged on. Good thing they fired Pat McCarthy.

Overall grade: D

4.) The Mountain Goats- Get Lonely.

Mountain Goats’ frontman John Darnelle is one of the most talented, consistent songwriter of the current indie scene. Since beginning the Mountain Goats circa 1993 with just a guitar and a Boombox with a microphone, Darnelle has written some 500 songs, with an incredibly consistent quality. So it surprised some to hear Darnelle struggle a bit with Get Lonely, his first real disappointment.

Lonely comes hot off the heels of some of Darnelle’s best work. 2005’s The Sunset Tree was a gripping account of his life living with an abusive step-father, and one of his most celebrated albums. With Lonely, he tackles more conventional subject matter: a failed relationship. This is one of the reasons the album sounds so awkward. One of the Goats’ biggest claims to fame is the fact that they stay away from the usual song topics, so hearing them tackle such a cliched area of songwriting is odd. Luckily, Darnelle does do it well enough to make it interesting, real, and honest. Rather than the cliched emo songwriting that almost always includes the line “I’m not going to be what you want me to be,” Lonely does a much better job at accurately describing a failed relationship.

Musically, Lonely is much more subdued than the Goats’ usual percussive style of playing. At times, this feels awkward since it’s an area that the band generally avoids. But the times it works, such as on “Woke Up New” and “Half-Dead” it works brilliantly.

Overall grade B+

5.) Weezer- Weezer (The Green Album)

The story of Weezer’s career has been told a million times now: Weezer released their first album, Weezer (The Blue Album) in 1994, and Pinkerton in 1996. The first album was a smash hit, commercially and critically. The second one…not so much. Pinkerton was a commercial flop, but in time became a cult smash once people finally understood it, proving that good music will always prevail in the face of shitty pop conformity: the crappy 90’s alt. rock bands that got more attention than Pinkerton were largely forgotten while both of the first two Weezer albums are now considered classics.

This initial commercial failure haunted chief Weezer songwriter Rivers Cuomo, so by the time Weezer finally recorded a follow up, he made a concsious attempt to return to the more bright, upbeat power-pop of the band’s debut. And now, Weezer (The Green Album) was born. Unfortunatly the album, while a commercial success, was an aesthetic failure. Only 3 of the albums 10 songs live up to the brilliance of the band’s first 2 classics, and it shows that Rivers was scared of any real experimentation or art in his music. Playing it safe may have worked out commercially, but most fans and critics see the 2nd half of Weezer’s career as inferior to the first half, a pale imitation of true former glory. And I can’t say that I disagree. Nothing on Weezer’s latest  albums have captivated me like “Across the Sea” or “Pink Triangle” from Pinkerton or like “No One Else” or “Surf Wax America” from Weezer (The Blue Album). One can hope, though.

Overall grade: D-

And with that, we conclude our broadcast day. See you later.

 Now listening to: Major Organ and the Adding Machine- Self-titled.

Hello.

So this should be fun. I used to have a blog…many may remember it from all that way back. I generally used to for opinionated ramblings about pretty much nothing, which is exactly what this one will be for. No consistant theme, nor will there be any in depth personal stuff here because I’m a pretty boring person to read about. Let’s be honest, no one cares what kind of sandwich I ate last night, nor do they want to see what is essentially a list of the type of alcohol I like to drink or whatever else I may write about my daily adventures.

 Expect many writings in here to be angry, hate-fueled rantings about bands and music that I dislike. Expect others to be insulting diatribes about things you like. Also expect jokes, but not Chuck Norris jokes or lolcats. I dislike those, and you should to.

 Have a good day. For now.