It’s a subtle touch—one you feel as the album swells. You notice sounds being fresher than before, as if the tapes were cleaned like an archaeologist brushing bones—only the find’s not bones but vibrant, undulating flesh. Each syllable of guitar growl is heard, the whirling layers above and the swirling layers below more defined. The vocals, though still blurred, are no longer a specter somewhere in the room but one looming in your personal space. It sounds like it was recorded today. It’s hungrier. It’s lustier. Soon it will consume you.
[Stream currently available via The Guardian]
What a Fool Believes
"What seems to be is always better than nothing."
The Wildly Unpopular Sensibility of Joshua Z Luft
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We were assigned to write a story in my seventh grade English class. It could be about anything. I was pumped. All writing up to that point had come with strict parameters, restraints—shit that bored me. This assignment destroyed all the rules in my mind. This was fiction—boundless, imaginative. The teacher’s idea was for us to learn not so much how to write fiction but the draft process, revisions, editing. I ignored that.
What I decided to write was a story based upon one of my favorite videos of the time (and all-time), the Spike Jonze-directed 70s cop movie homage, “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys. I was obsessed with the video (and the song), just as I was, at the time, with NYPD Blue and Serpico. I had thoughts about becoming a detective then but I think my fascination was more of a general interest in investigation—though, investigating art and life more than murder. Also, it just looked really cool. (Have you seen Al Pacino in Serpico? The hair, the shades, the beard, the beads, the bike? He looks awesome. And that’s how the real Frank Serpico was!) But unlike NYPD Blue, which I could see on network television, and Serpico, which I could rent for free from the public library, my exposure to the thoroughly cool “Sabotage” was far less—I didn’t have MTV. So when I decided to write a story about the video, it wasn’t one of those literary adaptations of a movie, me playing the video over and over again to meticulously capture every moment in prose. I was going by memory. Plus, I was expanding, indulging. The video was really a trailer to the story I had planned.
I was up to twenty-two pages on “Sabotage” when the story was due. Of my first draft. The other kids in my class had written stories of a few pages, revised them on the second and third, and were ready to turn in the final. I was just getting warmed up. The scene I recall being on was the one where Cochese was tied to a chair, a bomb ticking down on a table before him. His partners are about to bust down the door with some karate kicks. They free him and the three rush out of the building, across the street, sliding over the hood of their car, just before the building explodes. Later, they track down the bad guys and put them down. But I had to turn in what I had. I think I got a B—the teacher wrote something about how creative it was but couldn’t go higher because, well, I hadn’t completed my assignment. I wish I could’ve finished it. There was a lot more of the story to tell.
- The buzzed interpolation of The Stooges’ “1970” for “2012 (You Must Be Upgraded)”, which trades in Detroit distortion for guitars like fried car alarms and busted dial-up modems.
- That “2012 (You Must Be Upgraded)” features Biz Markie and that that feature is an incomprehensible two seconds of startled-awake garble.
- The “Ghost of Michael McDonald”/”Kenny Loggins as LSDeity” duet between Bon Iver and Wayne Coyne on “Ashes in the Air”.
- The drums like “The virgin blood is running down the pyramid and into the God’s mouth so I’m just gonna shimmy all night long in His honor” on “Supermoon Made Me Want to Pee”.
- The appropriate de-evolution, destruction, and apocalyptic insanity of the animated video for “Supermoon Made Me Want to Pee”, featuring ghosts of Christmas trees and a missing link pissing on a human skull.
- The segue from “Supermoon” into “Children of the Moon”.
- “Children“‘s cosmic relaxation—like swaying in a hammock tied to rocks in the rings of Saturn, soaking up Titan’s glow.
- The Nick Cave cascade and delivery of “You can touch me if you want!” on “You, Man? Human???”.
- Side B (“Supermoon” through “You, Man? Human???”).
- Yoko Ono’s manic imp bouncing around its master, starved for the action and effects of whatever the “It” of “Do It!” brings about.
- The majestically-facing-Melancholia-as-it-crushes-Earth performance by Erykah Badu on “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”.
- Chris Martin’s dorky-yet-endearing last line on the “Imagine”-quoting “I Don’t Want You to Die”.
- The range of guest stars/The focus of the collection.
PJ Harvey: “Meet Ze Monsta [Live 6/24/95-Glastonbury Festival]”
The video is shaky and a little grainy, fitting for footage of supernatural creatures. The audio is precise, her yelps and husky tones captured amidst the subterranean buzzes, squelches, and clarion calls. She struts and commands in a hot pink catsuit. If she spotted you, eyes piercing through your hiding place behind the lens, you would plead to be taken into her world, even if she reduced you to static like the one who held the camera before you. She smiles then. You think, Hell, why wait?, then rush to her.
Pulp: “Common People [Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, 4/9/12]”
Has anyone checked Jarvis Cocker’s attic for a withered portrait? There may be some Picture of Dorian Gray business happening here. The man is coming up on fifty and he’s dancing around the stage and leaping atop monitors with the grace of a man half his age.
He’ll never age like common people / He’ll never die like common people do
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Grimes: “Genesis”
I was at a friend’s wedding in South Carolina over the weekend. The reception was held outdoors beneath a tent. The sun was beginning to go down and the clouds and sky looked like pink and blue cotton candy. I was asked to sing a song. I decided to go with a song that, at best, one other person knew.
Preparation was required for the song. I had a couple of friends help me lug my helium tank from the rental car to the stage inside the tent. On stage, I wrapped my lips around the cool metal nozzle and filled myself full of helium. Stuffed, I headed to the microphone only to find myself floating from the stage. Help, I squeaked. Caterers ran up on the stage and tried to pluck me from the air. I was already too high. Family members of the bride and groom tossed chairs up at me to catch, to weigh me down. My hands were like balloons, I couldn’t grip them. A strong wind came rushing through the tent and took me outside. Before I floated out into the dusk, I saw some friends behind a large fan, directing its wind, laughing, raising their drinks to me.
I could spot Charleston from a thousand feet up. I was watching it twinkle when I ran into something above me. My back was to the sky so I couldn’t make it out. I felt hands around my left arm, something being tied to me. The hands released me and I floated up further to see the basket of a hot air balloon, a neon-orange string attaching me to it. Inside was Claire Boucher, a/k/a Grimes. Silly, she said, giggling. Leave it to me. She was dressed like a renaissance fair entertainer’s idea of a peaceful 22nd century.
After an hour or so, the last of the helium escaped through my pores. Claire brought the hot air balloon down onto the wedding grounds. Thank you, I said. Would you like to perform a song for the newlyweds? Sure, she said. She performed “Genesis”. A lot of the party thought it was strange but I enjoyed it.
Outhere Brothers: “Boom Boom Boom”
1. It’s Friday.
2. My brother had a copy of Jock Jams, Volume 2. This was obviously a highlight. It was also a great soundtrack for Nok Hockey or any Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 or Sega Genesis game.
3. More Sweet Sixteen games tonight. Michigan’s out and Illinois never made it but the Outhere Brothers are wearing those teams’ uniforms.
4. It’s Friday.
5. Really, what else do I need to say? This song is ridiculously fun.
If Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore are the “cool” ones of Sonic Youth, then Lee Ranaldo is the “mysterious” one*. Lee’s generally quiet, allowing the garrulous Moore to be band spokesman. A song or two of his is featured on nearly all of the studio albums but the songs are abstract vignettes populated by cryptic acts and ambivalent characters. When on stage, he’s fully connected to the band and to the music but seeming to be transmitting his signals from a reclusive, internal space, his wild, silvering hair and collection of effects making him look like a tinkering scientist. Despite thirty years in rock and roll, it’s easy to wonder about Lee.
I am a big fan of Lee. His contributions to Sonic Youth over the years have been, at worst, dependable, and, at best, transcendent. When I’ve seen Sonic Youth live, I’m always on Lee’s side of the stage. Though my focus will drift to Thurston, his mop swaying as he shreds away, to Kim, snarling as she bounces in high heels, to Steve, locked in and pounding away, and to Mark, grinning infectiously, it always returns to Lee. What’s Lee playing on this part? What’s that strange little box he’s using? As a man with silvering hair, a penchant for making noise on guitar, and a natural reticence, it’s no stretch to say I like Lee because I’m like Lee.
When I found out Lee was putting out a solo singer-songwriter album, I was pumped. I wondered what it was gonna be like. A collection of the kind of abstract vignettes he’d been making with Sonic Youth, or something out of the blue, made entirely of samples and synths? After hearing the lead single, “Off the Wall”, I was pleasantly surprised. This wistful slice of folky power-pop had me thinking he was going with something similar to Thurston’s first solo record, Psychic Hearts. My excitement was sustained.
I’ve listened to Between The Times And The Tides several times now and it has grown on me. The folky sounds of “Off the Wall” pervade with acoustic guitars sharing space with electric, organ rising and falling, Steve Shelley’s surefire drumming, and bits of country twang. Noise and abstraction have been exchanged for 70s FM radio and directness. There’s nothing like the aural car crash of “In the Kingdom #19” but there is a frank and winsome love song like “Stranded”.
It’s by no means a great record but it certainly doesn’t warrant the 5.2 rating given by Grayson Currin on Pitchfork. I agree with Currin on the lyrics. When I heard the “I don’t wanna throw a wrench in the works/ But this whole town is full of jerks” couplet I cringed. Ok, so there isn’t going to be lyrics crafted out of spam emails and the cut-up technique. That’s fine. Lee’s going for directness on this album. However, you can be direct without being hackneyed. Sadly, Lee makes this mistake too often. What I don’t agree with Currin on is the general mediocrity of the album. I think this assessment comes from expectation. Tides isn’t that collection of Lee Sonic Youth songs. It’s not particularly adventurous or volatile in its sounds. This is well-traversed ground that Lee is walking through. But to him, I imagine this is adventurous. Here’s a guy who’s been using alternate tunings and harnessing noise for thirty years. A straightforward album of guitar pop for Lee Ranaldo is experimental. And it’s not a bad bit of straightforward guitar pop. In addition to “Off the Wall”, there’s “Fire Island (Phases)”, a rocker that shifts gears a few times, incorporates that country twang, and has a welcome Neil Young influence, “Xtina As I Knew Her”, which actually comes close to being a Lee Sonic Youth song, a brooding tale of a lost girl, “Tomorrow Never Comes”, the Beatles-referencing closer with one of the album’s most memorable melodies, and the lush and lovely “Stranded”.
Between The Times And The Tides continues the mystery of Lee Ranaldo. Just when you think he’s going to churn some digitized babble out of that strange effects box, he picks up an acoustic guitar in traditional tuning to sing a love song. It may not be cool but it’s certainly intriguing. And as you drift from the cool to the mysterious, you might notice that the “mysterious” one was really the “cool” one all along.
*Mark Ibold is the “happy” one and Steve Shelley is the “Steve Shelley” one.
Steely Dan: “My Old School”
The jam was wound up and cut loose. Players exited the studio and were thanked by Fagen and Becker with a nod.
The duo headed to the lounge. Someone had left their mail in a stack on the bar. They took a load off on the stools. Becker fished through the mail. Amidst the junk something caught his eye. He held it up to Fagen.
“I’m a sucker for nostalgia.”
It was a card for their high school reunion. It was happening that night.
“I suppose California’s tumbled,” Fagen said.
They were in the car on the way to their old school. Fagen was behind the wheel, shades on, fingers tapping in time to the radio. They’d picked up Michael McDonald. He sat in the back singing along to whatever song came on. His harmonies were perfect.
“These smoggy sunsets always choke me up,” Becker said.
There was a table set up in the hallway before the gymnasium. Two women and a man sat at the table. Their skin was taut and bronze, their smiles shameless. There was a pile of booklets made up of memories at one end and Hello My Name is… stickers on the other.
“Welcome to the Reunion, gentlemen,” the man said. He offered up three pens. “Write your names on the stickers and join the festivities.”
Fagen, Becker, and McDonald hunched over the table and quickly filled in the blanks. They slapped the stickers on their blazers. Fagen’s read “Don Henley”, Becker’s “Joe Walsh”, McDonald’s “Glenn Frey”. They grinned at one another.
The trio sat around a table finishing up their scotch. Three women approached—old flames.
“Like gas to electric,” Becker said.
The women wore expensive replicas of their past selves over the present.
“Well,” Fagen sighed, “how can you trust anything real?”
“I feel reunited. You feel reunited, Mike?”
“Most definitely.”
“Let’s take this on the road.”
“Tijuana, Mike?”
“Tijuana’ll do, fellas.”
They listened to a quartet of exiles blow in their favorite shack on the beach. They were on tequila now. McDonald got the worm. The women were wild.
The quartet played their encore, nodded to the gang, and headed out. The women leaped from the table, grabbed another bottle from the bar, and made off after them. Fagen, Becker, and McDonald watched them all disappear down the beach.
“Like I said, I’m a sucker for nostalgia.”
“Nothing like the good old days.”
“The Golden Boys at it again.”
“Let’s get the hell outta here.”
Candlebeatbox was born in 2011 when Brady Colb and Dakota Sheff, two young musicians attending the University of South Florida in Tampa, paired up to create the music they loved: post-grunge-influenced progressive house. The pair felt that the majority of the post-grunge-influenced progressive house acts of the late-aughts had contaminated and diluted the sound. Their mission: “To return post-grunge-influenced progressive house to its essence, its pure form.”
Back then, Tampa boasted several of post-grunge-influenced progressive house’s hottest acts, including Deep Dishwalla, Collective Trance, DJ Everclear, and Marcy Underground. But while these and other groups tried to outdo one another with the newest breaks and freshest samples, causing them to quickly lose focus on the genre and drift into nu-metal-influenced progressive jungle, Candlebeatbox went deeper within the genre, discovering the origins of post-grunge and progressive house. The pair’s sound became a reaction to Deep Dishwalla and the like, remaining faithful to post-grunge-influenced progressive house while playing around its edges.
Candlebeatbox took their sound across central Florida, playing at famous post-grunge-influenced progressive house clubs like The Grind Bin and Puddle of 808. Fans couldn’t get enough. By the end of 2011, they were a headlining act, every show a sell-out.
Then all was quiet on the Candlebeatbox front.
Months passed without a single show. Fans were in a frenzy for that pure post-grunge-influenced progressive house sound.
Now the wait is over.
On April 3, Candlebeatbox will release its debut EP, Never Far Behind the Beat. The EP will feature five tracks, including the Silverchair “Tomorrow”-sampling club favorite, “Hard to Drink”, plus two remixes by DJ Even Better Than Ezra and Goo Goo the Bass. The EP will be available on the group’s Bandcamp page.
In addition, to the EP release, the group will have a week-long residency, April 1–7, at Tampa’s newest post-grunge-influenced progressive house club, Seven Mary Three-O-Three’s, to celebrate their debut, before heading out on an East Coast tour.
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