1.30.2015

End of the Month Music Bitchfest - January 2015

They Might Be Giants
Welcome to the first of, oh, let's say, twelve installations of...

The Dial-A-Song Round-Up!*

Dial-A-Song returned this month with four brand new They Might Be Giants recordings, the first of which is a straight up guitar-centric rocker helmed by Mr. John Linnell. It's called "Erase" and is a fabulous start to this Year of Dial-A-Song. It fits with the age old TMBG trope of pairing bouncy, frenetic music with dark-as-hell lyrics ("when darlings must be murdered/when your heartbreak overwhelms your heart", "think of this as solving problem that should never have occured/please don't call it strangulation, that is such an ugly word", "the skeletons that won't stay down/the mercy kill that can't be drowned"). Such a return to form...it's almost too perfect.

Next, is a mellow, piano-driven track led by Flans called "Madam, I Challenge You To A Duel". At their show on January 25th, where this (and every other DAS song, for that matter) was debuted live, Flansburgh revealed that the genesis of the song came from this YouTube clip of Oliver Reed and Shelley Winters on the Tonight Show back in 1975. I'd like to imagine the number of songs with that origin can be counted on one, giant, foam finger

After that, already breaking from form, is a circusy/balladey type thing featuring Corn Mo as the sole vocalist. It's called "No Cops" and tells the story of a group of people who seem to have taken the band and the audience hostage ("we’ve locked all the doors and please understand/we’ve nailed down the latch so meet our demands/in the time that we permit, or else the band will get it"). They then go on to say that "(they) are here to steal your dreams" and then urge us to "listen and comply". This will serve as the new introduction music for TMBG's upcoming world tour.
Obviously. 

And, finally, the crown in this first month's collection, "Music Jail, Part 1 & 2"**.
Part 2 is my favorite and should be yours as well. I'm not even going to explain this, just listen for yourself. Also: how fucking insane is that video?

A wholly excellent offering for TMBG fans for this first month of Dial-A-Song.
It can only get worse from here.

As for that January 25th concert I mentioned earlier...that is to be the first of twelve shows at the Williamsburg Hall of Music that TMBG are having the last Sunday of each month for the entire year. Aside from two or three tracks I could've done without (you can probably guess which ones by now), it was a total blast and I'm looking forward to the rest of my spoiled-rotten-by-They-Might-Be-Giants year. Review of the show can be found here.

Eels
While working on the follow up to The Cautionary Tales Of Mark Oliver Everett, Eels will be releasing a new live album (and concert film), specifically of their performance from June 2014 at the Royal Albert Concert Hall. A little surprised and bummed they didn't put one out for their fantastic 2013 tour, but, knowing E, that's not an impossibility.
Fingers crossed.
Info and pre-orders and stuff here.



In other news, I sifted through some of the "best of" lists from the end of 2014, namely, Rolling Stone's, NPR's, and that of my friend, Will. Most of what I listened to has become a blur except for the following:


  • Haley Bonar's The Last War is utterly fucking fantastic (thank you, Will).
  • Sia, FKA Twigs and Banks should all tour together and end the evening with a massive, suicide fuck pit.
  • Rolling Stone no longer knows anything about music.

The new Manson album, The Pale Emperor, was released earlier this month and I reviewed it. It's the best thing he's done in over a decade, but it's still not very good. One thing I do have to compliment him on is the packaging***; it's minimalist in a way I've never seen from Manson and it's very effective. The requisite photos of Mason are very well shot and tell a story that the album's songs do not. The disc is as close to pure black as one can achieve in this day and age of record label branding, logos and those god damned cocksucking anti-piracy marks****, plus, the front and back of the packaging have a distinct sandpaper texture that I've never encountered before on an album. And, yes, I know that, when one is giving the most praise from an album to its artwork that there's a real fucking problem.
Like I said: it's still not very good.
You can read the full review here.

Finally, it's been over four years since Cake released any new music and, you know what? I'm done with them. So, replacing Cake for the foreseeable future on the End of the Month Music Bitchfest is....

St. Vincent
Annie Clark (who got so many goddamn rightly deserved Best Of The Year awards for her mind-blowing self titled album) will be releasing a deluxe edition of her St. Vincent featuring five bonus tracks; three of them awesome ("Del Rio", "Pieta" (a recent live staple), Sparrow"), two of them not as awesome ("Bad Believer", the Darkside remix of "Digital Witness").
She's expanded her tour again***** and will also be contributing to David Byrne's new project "Contemporary Colors", which, despite both their involvement, is centered around color guard and, therefore, I have no interest in.

And there you are; 2015 is here. I expect those two new TMBG albums, maybe some more Beck, hopefully a fucking peep from Reznor and the announcement of that new Eels by Q3. Otherwise, I'm turning this whole thing around and we're going to try again...until we get it right.





Shit my dick, am I as bad as ever with titles...

** According to Linnell, it would have been called "Music Jail Parts 1 & 2", except somebody typed the name in wrong.

*** Although I should probably be complimenting the designer who came up with it.

**** LIKE THOSE EVER STOPPED ANYONE FROM PIRATING ANYTHING! AND ANOTHER THING! WHY DO YOU ONLY HAVE THOSE FUCKING ANTI-PIRACY REMINDERS ON THE BLU-RAYS I PURCHASE?! I ALREADY PURCHASED IT! I DIDN'T PIRATE IT, YOU STUPID, USELESS FUCKS!

***** If you missed it the first time, don't make the same asshole idiot mistake again.

A review of They Might Be Giants at the Williamsburg Hall of Music - 1.25.15

Let's begin with the admission that I am completely spoiled. One of my very favorite bands lives within a fifteen mile radius of where I live and, therefore, end up playing a whole lot of shows near me, so I get to see them a whole lot.
That being said: this year, on the last Sunday of every month, They Might Be Giants will have a concert at the Williamsburg Hall of Music...a ten minute cab from my home.
I plan on going to all twelve.
The first of these shows was on January 25th, my birthday.
Another bonus: for the majority of these, there is no opener; doors are at 7, TMBG takes the stage at 8 and plays until just about 10. I showed up less than a half hour before doors and ended up dead center, seven feet from Mr. John Linnell's keyboard.

Now, onto the show: I hadn't seen They Might Be Giants since December of 2013, and I usually find that these shows, the "first in a long time" shows, tend to be something special. TMBG had wrapped up their Nanobots tour at the end of 2013, and, aside from three or four special shows in 2014, had sequestered themselves in the studio, creating two new albums set for release later this year as well as (I assume) the bulk of their 2015 Dial-A-Song offerings.
On the whole, this was a fabulously well-rounded show, featuring a handful of live staples ("Birdhouse In Your Soul", "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" (featuring the Screaming Space Rock interlude)), some old favorites returning for the first time in a long time ("Spiraling Shape", "Cyclops Rock"), brand new, never-performed-live songs, most from TMBG's recently resurrected Dial-A-Song service ("Erase", "Music Jail, Part 1 & 2"), some newer live staples ("When Will You Die?", "Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had A Deal"), and, a few tracks I'd prefer to never hear again ("Damn Good Times" (with which they opened), "The Mesopotamians")*.

Standouts included "Cyclops Rock", "Man, It's So Loud In Here" (which I hadn't heard in its pre-Mink Car arrangement since 1999 or so), "We're The Replacements", "Spiraling Shape" and "Call You Mom". Also the banter...always the banter.

Next month is their "First Album Show".





* But, at least the Avatars of They appear to have been retired. They were funny the first five times but then...yeesh...

1.22.2015

The Radio Mercury Awards

For the past ten or so years, I've been working as a professional voice actor in New York City (90-95% VO, 5-10% on screen actor).
The majority of VO auditions I go out on are boring, banal and completely lacking the cool/important/effective sound or vibe that the writers/clients want and need so desperately. Every once in a while, a job will come along that is rewarding, challenging, and fun (Speakaboos, Target) but those are exceptions.
Some of the more overused and tired directions these scripts come with are "not-announcery", "conversational", "friendly" and so on. Although these are well known tropes, often it seems like no one is doing anything to change the status quo. How can we make people think of something more interesting? To challenge themselves to write better copy and push their limits?
Offer them money, of course.
So, then there was the Radio Mercury Awards, who give $50,000 dollars to the agency/production company who comes up with the most creative/innovative/entertaining etc. radio ad.*
Anyway, about a month or so ago, my friend and VP of Just Voices, Roger, got in touch with an audition that was pretty much right up my alley: I had to do about a dozen different voices, each one mocking the shitty copy I've been reading for a decade.
I played like a child in the ocean.
I auditioned, felt great about it, and, a day later, booked it.
I got to record in one of my favorite studios in the city (Sound Lounge) and work with some giants of the industry, who I proceeded to impress and delight with my vocals skills and then, on top of all this...I was given money for it.
Long story short: here's the first part of what we shot, enjoy.

Things We Don't Want to Hear in a Radio Ad (Part 1) from Radio Mercury Awards on Vimeo.



* And a bunch of random sums to Best New Agency, Runners Up and so on.

1.14.2015

A review of Marilyn Manson's "The Pale Emperor"




















My hopes were, admittedly, low as I waded into Marilyn Manson’s 9th studio album, The Pale Emperor. Would it be a sad, wet fart? A leaking bag of liquescent, worm-ridden feces? Something worse? Or…something listenable…maybe even…enjoyable?
The biggest problem with this album is Manson, specifically his voice and his lyrics (except for a tiny handful of tracks). Also, the down-n-dirty thump drums are way, way, way overused, but, aside from those two (arguably, pretty crucial) issues…sweet Christ I cannot believe I’m saying this after so long…this album is not a reeking pit of garbage.
This is a compliment.

Things get off to a genuinely solid start with “Killing Strangers”. Seriously. No bells and whistles, no pointless, droning intros, just some utterly filthy bass and guitar, as well as some percussion that could either be a mud caked maraca or a gun being cocked. Although there is some of that silly, lazy, not-really word play (“this world doesn’t need no opera / we’re here for the operation”), it’s not overly grating. Throw in a really nice eerily moody, sorrowfully melodic outro and, holy shit, you’ve gotten my hopes up, Marilyn…wait, why are you handing me a box of tissues…? And smiling?

Things…depreciate…from this point on until almost the end of the album. For as garbled as his vocals are, one can’t deny that “Cupid Carries A Gun” is a pretty well made song. After that, the closer, “Odds Of Even”, which has some excellent atmospheric layers, ameliorates some of what’s come before it. Like the majority of the tracks on Pale Emperor, it’s too good for Manson’s vocals. There’s some chilling, old school croaking from Manson towards the end, a pleasant throwback for fans.

Along with those three tracks, a few others stand out, mainly (pretty much solely), for their music and not their vocals or lyrics, specifically “Mephistopheles of Los Angeles”, “Warship My Wreck”* and “Slave Only Dreams To Be King”. If you’re keeping count, that six solid tracks of the ten that make up The Pale Emperor. A stunning ratio.

I also need to take a moment and give sincere praise to the one and only clever turn of phrase on the album: in the single, “Deep Six”, a song mentioning Zeus and Narcissus, as well as referring to Icarus, Manson has the lyric (repeated maybe a few times too many) “Eros is sore”…well done, Marilyn. Whether this came from hours of quiet reflection or you seeing the word “sore” quietly reflected in a pool of semen (he’d probably have random pools of semen strewn about his home, yes? He is still the God of Fuck, right?): I am impressed.

But. This one shining example is embedded in a viscous ocean of mung. Some examples: “I don’t want your God and your higher power / I want power to get higher” (“The Devil Beneath My Feet”), “You are what you beat” (“Slave Only Dreams To Be King”), and “You want to know what Zeus said to Narcissus? / ‘You’d better watch yourself’” (“Deep Six”). Ugh. I try not to think too hard about the “meaning” of his lyrics these days, because doing so is like sifting through shit looking for undigested peanuts.
And just as rewarding.

To get off my snark horse for a moment, I did have another real issue; when I listen to this album, I get no sense of who this “pale emperor” is supposed to be. Is it Death? Because nothing on offer really cements that or any other idea. There’s war imagery, talk of guns, God, the Devil, demons, angels; there’s a “King” mentioned in “Slave Only Dreams To Be King” and a line in “Cupid Carries A Gun” referring to Death (“Folks say that I look like Death”), but none of that is the same as constructing a storyline or creating a character. Unlike Antichrist Superstar and, to a lesser extent, Mechanical Animals and Holy Wood, where there was a clear narrative with characters, and a beginning, middle and end, this is just a collection of songs plagued with Thumpy Drums. I’ll fully admit to being drawn in immediately by the title; it’s very evocative, and this lack of depth is the biggest letdown for me, even when stacked next to Manson’s near-useless voice and overwrought lyrics.

There are three things I would say to Manson if he weren’t preoccupied with…I don’t know…filling ravens with cocaine and then slamming them up his ass?…that sounds outlandish and silly enough to be something he’d do, right?
  1. Fix your voice. I’m not talking about auto tune or anything along those lines, I’m talking about maybe drinking some water or not singing first thing in the morning or removing all the socks from your mouth before hitting “record”. Vocally, the songs here fall into two categories, for the most part: irascible ranting or groggy mumbling. Sometimes the ranting is groggy, sometimes the mumbling is irascible, but, either way, it’s mostly garbage. Quite frankly, I just can’t understand a lot of what the fuck he’s saying without a lyric sheet in front of me. It’s distracting.
  2. Repeating something several times in one three and a half minute song doesn’t make it clever or expose a deeper meaning. In fact, if it’s just barely tolerable the first time, it only gets worse with each repetition. It’s called “diminishing returns”, Marilyn…and I am 100% certain you’ve heard that term a few times in the last decade.
  3. Stick with Tyler Bates (guitarist, keyboardist and co-producer on Pale Emperor). While it might not be groundbreaking, the music here is miles better than anything you’ve done (with or without Twiggy) in the past ten years.
Aside from The Golden Age Of Grotesque, released in 2003, this is, shockingly, one of Manson’s best albums, alas, he’s still missing the clarity, focus and fury of his best works. He just doesn’t really have anything to say anymore, nothing we want or need to hear anyway. I’m done expending my energy hoping Marilyn Manson is going to have some sort of renaissance. I think Pale Emperor is the best we can expect from him now, in the same way that thyroid cancer is the best kind of cancer someone can get.

A note on the bonus tracks: all three are acoustic-esque renditions of tracks from the album, namely “Third Day Of A Seven Day Binge” (“Day 3”), “The Mephistopheles of Los Angeles” (“Fated, Faithful, Fatal”), and “Odds Of Even” (“Fall Of The House Of Death”), so, if you’re favorite aspect of those three songs is Manson’s vocals, then the deluxe version of the album is for you.  

* Stupid pun or sloppy spellchecking? You decide!