Solicitations For A Month Full Of Content

Last year, there was M.A.R.C.H., and it was good. My distinguished colleague set a deadline to write a new blog post every week, which resulted in gems like these.

This year, I'll try something similar, but (in Mountain Dew parlance) more x-treme. It's called February (no acronym this time--I'm not a masochist). Starting today, you should see new content from me for an entire month, every day, sometimes a little at a time but hopefully enough to increase traffic around these parts.

I have some ideas and some writings in the pipeline, but any suggestions you have for music-related issues you'd like me to write about would be greatly appreciated (in the comments or through email). For the next week or so, I'm going to take the template of our track-by-track reviews and apply it to an older album, namely The Clash's triple album Sandinista! Why that overstuffed album of all albums? There are a few reasons, some of which will be explained over the course of this project, but it mostly has to do with its insane length and manifold genre-crosses. Given that there are 36 songs total on three records (amounting to six tracks per side), I'll spread out these reviews over the course of six days.

Otherwise, you should expect a review of Glee's post-Superbowl show (I'm no fan, but recent comments made by show creator Ryan Murphy re: Glee's contributions to music education have me thinking I should check it out). Given that it will be February, I suppose I should probably do something about Valentine's Day, but I'm not sure what--the only thing lamer then a Valentine's Day mix is an anti-Valentine's Day mix (maybe I'll just post this Replacements song, the only I can think of that qualifies as neither). By the end of the month, I hope this will all lead to one gigantic post which would be a grand, extended scholarly exegesis on the socio-political factors guiding Brooklyn music criticism, borrowing the template and some of the terms first posited by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen in this PressThink piece on the supposed political biases of the Washington press corps. This project in particular will be different from anything featured on Rockaliser so far, I think, in that it would be a less colloquial and more reasoned longer piece complete with footnotes and sources and the like. Interested? I can explain it to you in more detail upon request, and would love to get you involved.

Rockaliser Radio

The Pazz & Jop poll came out a few days ago, but here's what you've really been waiting for: our first Rockaliser End-Of-Year Radio Rockcast (Feat. Polite Convo, Minor Disagreements & Technical Incompetence). Broadcast from the offices of alternative media collective Radiohive, Aaron Mendelson and I discuss our Top 10 lists, share the love for Grinderman and Big Boi, compare the relative merits of Trill OG vs. Bun B on other people's albums, laugh once more at the stupidity of Kanye's album titles, and throw in a few easy barbs at Eric Clapton for no discernible reason:


You can download the show here. My list in written form is here; Aaron's is here. Bonus: list number-crunching.

Thanks to Juell S. for sharing the Radiohive studio and my esteemed colleague for editing numerous cuing mistakes and long, uncomfortable silences. To our readers: would you like to see more of this in the future? Let us know--we do have the technology.

In case you're wondering, my voice does sound that distorted in real life.

Retconned Out Of Existence: Café Tacuba's "Revés"

I have no love for Warner Music Group, the gargantuan family of record labels that has accused itself of copyright infringement, but I've felt particularly rankled by one of the label's recent decisions. It's a reissue that demonstrates greed, foolishness, or ignorance, and maybe all three.

Café Tacuba, the Mexican rock band, are one of my favorite groups. Since 1992, when the band released their first album, los tacubanos have crafted some of the richest, most engaging music on the planet. Their relatively recent Sino took on classic rock, and they typically fuse art-rock with traditional Mexican music. I've seen the group compared to Beck, The Beastie Boys, Talking Heads, Radiohead, and The Beatles. It's a credit to Café Tacuba's eclecticism, evolution, and stature that all of these comparisons have some merit.

Anyways, in late 2009 the Warner subsidy WEA Latina reissued the group's 1999 disc, Yo Soy. The single-album reissue was a strange move, since Yo Soy was originally released as one half of the double album Revés/Yo Soy. The reissue appeared to celebrate Yo Soy's tenth anniversary, and came with new album art and the requisite remaster. But that seemed idiotic--why no Revés?

In the past ten years, the Revés/Yo Soy CDs have become a collector's item--in mint condition they can fetch $200, and it's pretty difficult to find even a shitty copy for less than thirty bucks. How this came to be I can't say. Online vendors claim that it's rare, but I'm skeptical--I assume it was mass-produced, by earth's largest record conglomerate, in Mexico and the U.S., barely ten years ago. Revés/Yo Soy was reviewed in Time magazine, and won a Latin Grammy, but has somehow become scarce enough to justify a three-figure asking price.

Maybe WEA rushed out Yo Soy to fill this void, but retconning Revés out of existence was the wrong way to do it. While the two discs are substantially different, and originally arrived in separate jewel cases, their very titles ask for them to be considered as a piece. Revés translates as reverse, and Yo Soy is a palindrome, spelled the same forwards and backwards. The CDs actually identify themselves as disc one and disc two of the same set. And Yo Soy's "La Muerte Chiquita," a minor hit in Mexico, reappears as "M.C." on Revés.

The difference between the Revés and Yo Soy versions of the same song illustrates another point: the halves of the double album are quite different. Yo Soy contains the pop songs, breezy and subdued. There's some weird stuff, for sure--the lovely "Bicicleta" is 2 minutes and 36 seconds long, but split into 26 seamless tracks, and a few of Revés' motifs make an appearance--but it's the Warner-neglected disc that's really far out.

Revés is 50 minutes of instrumental music. It eludes easy description, but the playful experimentalism of Café Tacuba is on full display throughout. The planes of sound on opener "11" (most song titles are arbitrary numbers) fit together like one of Diego Rivera's Cubist canvases. On "2," Café Tacuba appropriate the ambiance and Carlos Alomar guitar of Bowie's Berlin-era instrumentals, infusing them with their jumpy melodicism. Aggressive drum circles appear throughout the album--"10" features nothing else, save for some whooshing effects and a vocal sample towards the end. Songs take idiosyncratic turns: acoustic guitar will be joined, then overwhelmed, by airy backdrops, and the abrasive passages and percussive breakdowns approximate the electronica of the day. "M.C." doesn't even feature Café Tacuba--it's a cover of "La Muerte Chiquita" by The Kronos Quartet.

Revés isn't Café Tacuba's best album, but it's a rich listen. It illuminates not just Yo Soy, but also points towards the stranger moments on 2003's Cuatro Caminos, sometimes called the group's Kid A. And Revés could stand on its own, were it ever released that way.

Artistic intent and fidelity to the original release aren't everything, but I see no reason why WEA Latina would neglect Revés, which is not commercially available in 2010, even on iTunes. Here's an instance in which a major label forces fans to illegally download an album simply to hear it. To which I say: fuck Warner Music Group, fuck WEA Latina, fuck the botched Yo Soy rerelease. I'm going to go listen to Revés/Yo Soy.

Ears To The Street, Eyes To The Sky: Nathan's Favorite Albums of 2010

My personal favorite moment of 2010 music-related esoterica was while watching the Olivier Assayas movie 'Carlos,' when "Sonic Reducer" by the Dead Boys blared over Red Army terrorist Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann's (aka Nadia) car radio as she tried to outrun the Swiss border police. Anyway, here are my ten favorite albums of 2010, with apologies to worthy candidates like Gorillaz, Sleigh Bells, Liars, Neil Young, etc. I also still haven't heard 'Apollo Kids' amongst thousands of others so this list is as always subject to post-publication grafting.

1. Gil Scott-Heron, I'm New Here
A decade in and out of Rikers on cocaine charges has evidently failed to hinder the great poet's capacity for adventurous, cutting lyrical commentary, even as I'm New Here seems immediately and evidently a less political, more personal beast than many of his 70s funk classics. Everybody these days seems to be combining blues, jazz, rap and electronica, but Gil jumbles these elements as a means of evoking a specific locale--New York--exploring what the city used to be, what it is now, and what it could be, in dreams. As a recent NYC transplant, I find it sings with the expectations of an exhilarating, enlightened materialist take on urbanity. I'm New Here is brave in its sequencing: it ranges from acoustic Smog covers to tracks of brief recited verse to torch songs, all of which add up to a virtuoso deconstruction of popular American music, hip-hop, and basically everything else on the remainder of this list.

2. Janelle Monáe, The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III)
I've spent a lot of 2010 belaboring the point that The Archandroid is meant to contain the second two suites out of a total of four, so I don't know if it's exactly fair now to bestow such accolades on an ostensibly uncompleted work. But everyone must know by now how good The ArchAndroid is, and the level of energy and creativity that goes into potent genre-crosses like "Cold War," "Locked Inside," "Wondaland," and 15 others would be staggering enough even if Ms. Monáe wasn't already perhaps the greatest live performer in the world.

3. Big Boi, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty
Confession: Were it not for the lugubrious Jamie Foxx-assisted slow jamz business "Hustle Blood," this would be #1 on my list. Having scrutinized every errant Big Boi mp3 for years as Jive and Def Jam battled for this album's soul, it's wondrous to discover how deep and how virulent a strain of ear-crack this still is, no matter how old some of the tracks are. Song-for-song and verse-for-verse, Antwan Patton has improved his delivery and increased the breadth of his subject matter, and he demonstrates heretofore unnoticed insane skills as a producer. Andre 3000 may be our Prince, but Big Boi is our George Clinton, with the longevity and next-level rhyming skills (peep "The Train Pt. II") to match.

4. Caribou, Swim
Dan Snaith, aka the best Math PhD in the biz, has never done anything as awash in different forms of tension (something that dramatically sets him apart from his dance-y peers) as Swim. A track like "Leave House" starts off in DFA Land but veers into something scarier, more minimal; a track like "Kaili" messes with the parameters of balladry and atmosphere in a way that seems...well, mathematical. And, as my colleague intimated, "Odessa" has the opening firepower of a "Born Under Punches," which is to say this is a finely-tuned audio experiment, every note and motif carefully applied, that also happens to be enjoyable to listen to.

5. Nü Sensae, TV, Death and the Devil
Vancouver is one of many hubs in Canada for some of the best hardcore punk being produced in the world today, but what separates Nü Sensae from heavyweights like Fucked Up is that they bring a simplicity that outstretches even the earliest conceptions of the form--no epic guitar overdubs here, just distorted bass and drums and some searing lady vocals on top. Almost every track on TVDATD provides a different kind of amphetamine rush despite/because of this simplicity. This album isn't diverse, it's obverse--every idea the band has, they throw it in your face.

6. Freddie Gibbs, Str8 Killa EP
Gibbs, as far as I know, is the first rapper of note to come out of Gary, Indiana (apparently the Hoosier State has traditionally been short on lyrical talent), and the perspective he lends, coming out of a city with the highest percentage of African-Americans in the country (to say nothing of a significant pop dynasty), is unique--but that alone doesn't sum up why the 35-minute Str8 Killa sounded so much better than most longer players (in both senses). Gangsta Gibbs has the flow and deep register of a young Tupac, and songs like "Str8 Killa No Filla" and "National Anthem (Fuck the World)" are direct and high-energy examples of no-bullshit hardcore hip-hop. At EP length, this is a chaff-less debut from a unique, perhaps needed new voice.

7. Grinderman, Grinderman 2
Grinderman and Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, respectively my favorite albums of 2007 and 2008, still hold up better as collections of discrete middle-aged ramblings, but neither hit as hard as Grinderman 2, which takes the Nick Cave persona down unpaved paths of absurdity and self-flagellation as the band truly masters the idea of fuzz-as-feeling ("Worm Tamer") and makes occasional lapses into California stoner rock (see: the last half of "When My Baby Comes").

8. Marnie Stern, Marnie Stern
Up to now, one could enjoy Marnie Stern's music without really understanding what she was trying to do. Is this experimental mathcore, just intense rock tunes with insane drumming, or what? Her new self-titled release helps simplify what we should have known all along: Marnie Stern makes guitar records, and Marnie Stern is a great guitar record, and (on an unrelated note) Marnie Stern is the best guitar player in America. Quote me on that if you want, or just listen to the first twenty seconds of "Nothing Left," and see if it doesn't give you goosebumps like the end of "Cinnamon Girl."

9. OFF!, The First Four EPs
I found it hard to listen to The First Four EPs at once without unconsciously comparing the furious hardcore within to Black Flag's collection The First Four Years, which featured all of the early material recorded when Keith Morris was the singer. Now Morris, who formed OFF! with former members of Redd Kross and Rocket From The Crypt, is doing basically the same thing he did with Black Flag and Circle Jerks, and yet OFF! never sounds like a throwback. But that's the beauty of early 80s hardcore, in a way--elements can be appropriated and diluted by all the pop punks in the world, but the original core sound is always conjurable, and always compelling.

10. Cee-Lo Green, The Lady Killer
If the tunes weren't this good, I would complain that Cee-Lo needs to rap more. And he does, but The Lady Killer proves his cartoon soul croon to be just as mighty and flexible an instrument. "Fuck You" was deservedly a big hit, impassioned and thoughtful enough to bypass some (but not all) of the music industry's censorious forces, but the other soul homages, stretching from the North Philly sex-beat of "Fool For You" to the aggressively hooky Motown "It's Okay," are just as criminally relistenable, one after the other. Even the Band of Horses cover at the end has the air of a slow jam classic, and I still listen to it all the time.

Aaron's Favorites, 2010: Always Never Not Giving A Fuck

With apologies to Let's Wrestle, who's fantastic In The Court Of Wrestling Let's has been deemed ineligible, Aaron's 10 favorite releases of 2010:

1. Beach House, Teen Dream

A diffuse, gorgeous sound world. Listening to Alex Scally's guitar unfold over Victoria Legrand's vocal and keyboard melodies is the most enveloping, elegant narcotic on the market.

2. Big Boi, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty
Big Boi just wanted to make an album. Label trouble delayed it for years and kept Andre 3000 away. Whenever it was released, Sir Lucious Left Foot's virtuosic mic acrobatics were never really in doubt. But who could have predicted an album this joyous, this gleeful about the possibilities of funk?

3. Crime In Stereo, I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone
On their swan song, the Long Island group construct a violent, fractured punk. This is "melodic hardcore," but there's little melody here. I hear only fury--in the controlled explosions of the tempo, in the anguished dual vocals, and in the eviscerating guitar textures.

4. Caetano Veloso, zii e zie
The Brazilian master, now 68, cracks open his skull and lets us take a peek inside. The contents--languid, martian jams, which Veloso has termed transambas--are no surprise, and yet he makes each moment sound like a revelation.

5. The-Dream, Love King
The synthesizer symphonies of Love King are a letdown after last year's genius Love Vs. Money, but only just. Dream's music remains the platonic ideal of contemporary R&B--effortless, immediate music, with quirks and charms still revealing themselves months later.

6. Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
A fascinating and uneasy mix of West's egocentric philosophizing and terrible humor with the collective ennui of the group vocals, always popping up to comment on the action, as in Greek tragedy. The production is, of course, next level--dizzying, colorful collages of sound that pulse and thump with tenacity.

7. Das Racist, Sit Down, Man
Overheard on Sit Down, Man: "We just like rap, we don't even need rap." Maybe so, but rap needs Himanshu Suri and Victor Vazquez, at once laconic and whip smart, and surely the first hip-hop group to make eating nachos and reading critical theory sound ill as hell.

8. Grinderman, Grinderman 2
This unholy alliance of Nick Cave and a trio of the baddest seeds don't yet rival their day job band, but damn if they're not coming close. The Grinderguys pound out a strain demonic blues-scuzz you thought they didn't make any more.

9. No Age, Everything In Between
All indie-rock should sound like this: flurries of fuzz and hooks. The album gets stuck in an ambient ditch for a few tracks, but No Age can shred and transcend at will, and even sneak in a couple mid-tempo stunners.

10. Tame Impala, Innerspeaker
A big, groove-oriented psychedelic record in a year when even Dungen disappointed. The reverberations and acid-tinged flow of Innerspeaker aren't just retro signifiers though, they're the building blocks of 2010's most immersive sound.

Eric Clapton's Evil Speech

There's no mention of Eric Clapton on this blog. That makes sense--Clapton is not an especially relevant figure, and any honest assessment of his recent work must note how terrible it is (my dad occasionally buys Clapton releases, and this is certainly my impression). With a few exceptions, I don't care for his music, which I find boring and devoid of meaningful emotional content. Basically, I dislike Eric Clapton because I dislike Eric Clapton's music.

Recently, however, I came across a Clapton quote that almost defies words, and a very good reason to dislike Eric Clapton as a human being. It's from a 1976 concert in Birmingham, Enlgand:

Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands. Wogs I mean, I'm looking at you. Where are you? I'm sorry but some fucking wog...Arab grabbed my wife's bum, you know? Surely got to be said, yeah this is what all the fucking foreigners and wogs over here are like, just disgusting, that's just the truth, yeah. So where are you? Well wherever you all are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country. You fucking (indecipherable). I don't want you here, in the room or in my country. Listen to me, man! I think we should vote for Enoch Powell. Enoch's our man. I think Enoch's right, I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I'm into racism. It's much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans and fucking [indecipherable] don't belong here, we don't want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don't want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don't want fucking wogs living next to me with their standards. This is Great Britain, a white country, what is happening to us, for fuck's sake? We need to vote for Enoch Powell, he's a great man, speaking truth. Vote for Enoch, he's our man, he's on our side, he'll look after us. I want all of you here to vote for Enoch, support him, he's on our side. Enoch for Prime Minister! Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white! [source]

It's an unusually clear statement of principles. You might note that an anti-immigration position doesn't necessarily imply racism, but that's an irrelevant argument here, given the torrent of racial slurs and white supremacist rhetoric.

Enoch Powell, incidentally, was a right-wing British politician, most famous for his "Rivers Of Blood" speech, which decried immigration to the UK in the harshest possible terms. In the speech, Powell, an M.P., quoted a constituent as saying "In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man." Powell's assessment of that man was that he was "a decent, ordinary fellow-Englishman." The Times, not a liberal paper, called it "an evil speech."

Clapton came out of his would-be stump speech for Powell looking terrible, but he has remained unrepentant about his words. Later in 1976 he gave an interview to Sounds magazine, in which he says:

I thought it was quite funny actually. I don't know much about politics. I don't even know if it would be good or bad for him to get in. I don't even know who the Prime Minister is now. I just don't know what came over me that night. It must have been something that happened in the day but it came out in this garbled thing... I thought the whole thing was like Monty Python. There's this rock group playing on-stage and the singer starts talking about politics. It's so stupid. Those people who paid their money sittin' listening to this madman dribbling on and the band meanwhile getting fidgety thinking 'oh dear'.

There's nothing funny about incitements to racial violence. Clapton's attitude--that the incident was a big joke, what does he know he's just a rock star?--is deeply irresponsible, and it's a small miracle that no one was injured in Birmingham that night. It's a lame excuse anyway, since nothing in the Clapton persona suggests Pythonesque wit. Still, the Sounds interview gives Clapton a free pass. Barbara Charone barely mentions Clapton's comments, and does not quote or give any real indication of the content of his remarks. She attributes the comments to honesty on Clapton's part. Her selective take on Clapton's words is as follows:

Unlike other artistes of his stature, Clapton can't be bothered to disguise true feelings or adopt phony attitudes.

So one night in Birmingham someone said something that triggered off an unexpected part of Clapton's rowdier personality. Maybe it was the drink. Maybe it was just a bad day. But it was so human and typically Eric. How many times have you gotten a bit drunk and spouted out great truths and philosphies only to later blush the next morning?

Charone's excuses are logic-challenged--maybe he's just too honest! Sure, Eric just got drunk and said crazy, racist shit--but who doesn't! Let's laugh about it! Later in the article, Charone, jokingly and to Clapton's face, pins responsibility for his words on "the Arabs," probably a reference to the beginning of his diatribe. Clapton takes her bait, and criticizes Arabs for spending their riches poorly: "they're sinking a lot of money into England and we'll probably regain if we're clever enough. Then they'll have to go back and discover more oil." (No evidence of a rapier wit there).

Clapton and his apologists attribute his animus toward Arabs to a member of the Saudi royal famly taking a pass at his wife. Though Clapton was no stranger to adultery, one can understand his offense at a royal harassing his wife. Yet Clapton's actions blame all Arabs for the behavior of only one, as if his actions came from an inborn predisposition. That is essentialism. It's also present in his rant about "disgusting" foreigners, in which he names only dark-skinned immigrant groups. Clapton mentions one incident of a foreign-born person acting crudely, and extrapolates to the point where he can believe that "this is what all the fucking foreigners and wogs over here are like."

Imagine for a moment: what if a young Prince Charles had made eyes at, say, Jimi Hendrix's wife? Would Hendrix then be justified in vocally hating all white people? Would he be justified in advocating that all Britons be barred from entering Washington State? Would we stop short of calling his comments racist, since he collaborated with many white musicians?

The comparison is imperfect, but I think it illustrates the point: those things are unimaginable--Hendrix would have been labeled a Black Panther and his career as a crossover artist would have been toast. But let's pretend Jimi Hendrix did do those things, and then spouted a hateful, nativist jeremiad, and ask a question more to my point: would the music press then explain away and ignore his hateful outburst?

Because that's what has happened with Clapton.* On the one hand, there are the apologists. One of them is Harry Shapiro, who in 1997 published a book about Eric Clapton, Lost In The Blues. His book discusses the controversy, but charitably refers to Clapton's hate speech as a faux pas. Shapiro prints a story, told by Clapton, in which he was approached by a Rastafarian two years after his Birmingham rant, and asked if he hates blacks. Clapton told him no. The guitarist is then quoted as saying "what started it, was the upsurge in London of Arab money-spending." Shapiro adds, "there was a story that one particular Arab had made a grab for Patti, not guaranteed to endear them to Eric at all."

Critical Beatdown: Round Eleven

Ghostface Killah, "Together Baby"

NS: The soul sample that accounts for the title of this song shows up haphazardly, sometimes mid-verse, and is otherwise unrelated to the Supreme Clientele-hearkening free-associative carnage contained within. Ghost has seemed less slapdash than this before, but not in the past few years. 4/5

AM: The jarring transition from the soulful chorus to the sub-RZA minor key verses--produced by someone called Yakub--is terrible, and Ghost, who just a few years ago attacked his beats so hard he sounded breathless, just seems bored. 2.5/5

PJ Harvey, "Written On The Forehead"

NS: Overlaying Church harmonies and vast, Enya-esque synthmospheres with reggae beats isn't something I'd normally associate with Ms. Harvey--particularly not as the first single to an album ostensibly called Let England Shake. The song works, of course, as I think all PJ Harvey songs basically do, but there's still a lot of concentrated weirdness to unpack. 4/5

AM: The most ethereal thing Harvey's ever recorded, and by some margin, "Written On The Forehead" sounds less like a song than a collection of noises drifting in from outside. In less than four minutes the song achieves a quiet rapture, and the effect is the sort of thing many artists spend a career chasing. 4.5/5



David Lynch, "Good Day Today"
NS: Speaking of weirdness..."Good Day Today" bears the stamp of Lynch's previous collaborations with Angelo Badalamenti, but this is obviously far housier than anything you'd ever hear on Twin Peaks. Lynch's lyrics are deceptively simple and childish, as we'd expect, spicing up the otherwise generic but still-rousing technobeat. 3.5/5

AM: For his first single, the director has transposed his oddities to the world of music. Over a throbbing synthesyzers and a drum machine, Lynch wrestles with the themes that appear in his work ("So tired of fire"), his vocals heavily processed. His delivery is arrhythmic--a proper R&B singer could have a hit with this--but the chorus is arresting in its simplicity. 4/5

Daft Punk, "End Of The Line"
NS: I have understandable expectations for Tron: Legacy (Jeff Bridges is in it, which is cool, and the dialogue couldn't be nearly as bad as the 1982 original, right?), but I have been really excited to see how Daft Punk's score underscores the onscreen video game action. "End Of Line" is about exactly what I imagined, but that doesn't make it any less exciting. Compared to the rest of the movie, anyway. 3.5/5

AM: Is a song that builds to something considerably less exciting than what it promises a success? Not in the case of "End Of The Line," which has the Detroit techno nods but not the radiant pop-funk workouts that color the group's best work. 1.5/5

Destroyer, "Chinatown"
NS: Not sure this sounds like any Chinatown I've ever been to--I can't remember the last time a Destroyer song has gone down this smoothly (and my lord, those saxophones shouldn't be as effective as they are). If I had to compare this to anything, it would be the melodic yet dance-y spaciness of The The's Soul Mining. In other words, I have to give this a perfect grade. There's literally nothing wrong with it. 5/5

AM: Huddling amidst the gauzy atmospherics, Bejar has rarely sounded more desperate as a singer. But as a songwriter he's flexing muscles I didn't even know he had--the female vocals and back-alley saxophone are both new to the insular world of Destroyer. This is Bejar at his best: inscrutable, yes, but also genuinely mysterious. 5/5

Bernard Sumner, Hot Chip and Hot City, "Didn't Know What Love Was"

NS: I'm going to keep singling out these group collab tracks written for Converse commercials, not because Sumner and co. are particularly deserving of my ire, but because "What Love Was" provides a solid demonstration of what a song written for commercials sounds like. It's not as good; it's also a mish-mash of New Order's worst early 90's tendencies. 1/5

AM: I have not idea how this was composed, but it resembles a Hot Chip track--and this one, like the others I've heard, sounds like a sleepy version of New Order--with Bernard Sumner singing over it. It's alright, slightly too busy, but mostly it just makes me want to put on "The Perfect Kiss" or "Age Of Consent" or "Bizarre Love Triangle" or... 2.5/5

Aaron Listens To The Hits, Vol. 2

About 18 months ago, I listened to the the Top 10 songs on Billboard's Hot 100, and offered my thoughts on them. I've meant to revisit the project on numerous occasions, but haven't followed through. At one point, half of the Top 10 was so nauseating that I considered doing the UK Top 10 instead, only to discover that it was just as awful. But with that behind me, it's time to check in with the pop landscape...

Billboard Top 10, Issue Date December 11, 2010
1. Pink, "Raise Your Glass"
A while back, I read something by (I think) Maura Johnston that really nailed the Pink persona. Pink plays the rebel, Johnston noted, but her music always remains just pop enough to score success among the fans of the artists she's supposedly edgier than. "Raise Your Glass" is a good example of that, a song that celebrates outcasts but that will sound at home on Top 40 and Adult Contemporary stations. Musically, there's nothing to object to: this is assembly line Max Martin pop, assembled well. 2.5/5

2. Katy Perry, "Firework"
After the coy, annoying single and the prom night single, the good folks at EMI have deigned to grace us with the inspirational single. This minor Perry, even considering that all Perry is minor Perry (I say this as a fan of "Hot N Cold"). "Firework" sounds too small to achieve grandeur, and Perry, lacking a set of pipes like Mariah's, can't carry the chorus convincingly. 2/5

3. Rihanna, "Only Girl (In The World)"
Rihanna has reached a point where her hits resemble other Rihanna hits, and "Only Girl (In The World)" shares some of the DNA of 2007's M.J.-sampling "Don't Stop The Music." "Only Girl" isn't nearly as compelling, but it shares the sense of anxiety and merciless dancefloor stomp. Rihanna's still not a great singer, but she's distinctive, which can be just as good. 4/5

4. Bruno Mars, "Just The Way You Are"
We covered a Bruno Mars guest spot in the Beatdown, and I have the exact same feelings about this that I did about "Nothin' On You." It's lite rock with percussive nods to hip-hop. Let's not get into the lyrics: this is pure treacle, no way around it. 1/5

5. Rihanna feat. Drake, "What's My Name"
On the fantastic "Rude Boy," Rihanna was a woman out to get hers. I can't help but hear "What's My Name" in the shadow of that jam, and in comparison it sounds docile--"You're so amazing/you figured me out" is not a lyric I ever want to hear, especially about a dude who provides a verse as lazy as Drake's. The production--itself nothing mind-blowing--is the saving grace, airy with a stuttering rhythm. 3/5

6. Ke$ha, "We R Who We R"
This was apparently written in the wake of this fall's string of suicides by bullied, gay teens. Not sure how to feel about that--Ke$ha is probably in a better position to address suicidal teens than most people, but this weak dance-pop does the message no favors, and "We R Who We R" gradually becomes just another song about clubbing. There is something craven in its inability to actually, y'know, acknowledge that subject, or to differentiate itself from Ke$ha first hit in any way. 1.5/5

7. Far East Movement, "Like A G6"
I wish I could tell you that "Like A G6" excoriates earth's six largest economies for their catastrophic hubris, but of course it doesn't. This G6 is some sort of expensive private plane. No, the Far East Movement--the first Korean-American rappers of note--celebrate how fucked up you can get on cough syrup. The beat is minimal-ish, and kind of woozy, but these guys would probably get laughed out of Houston. 2.5/5

8. Nelly, "Just A Dream"
In a list that features "Firework," "Just The Way You Are," and "What's My Name," being the cornball anthem is an accomplishment, and not a good one. I could've swore Nelly's career was dead even before that Akon collaboration, but it seems that a song about being in love with your ex-wife has reignited it. This is pop-rap, but it's not hip-hop. 1.5/5

9. The Black Eyed Peas, "The Time (Dirty Bit)"
With the Black Eyed Peas, you know it's going to be cynical and generic, you just don't know what angle they're going to take. "The Time" forces together a power-ballad chorus, lifted from "I've Had The Time Of My Life," with a bloopy beat not particularly distinct from "Boom Boom Pow." I don't mean to insult B.E.P. fans--the one I know is in second grade, and she's cool--but that music this unimaginative continues to captivate Americans...it just makes me sad. 0/5

10. Bruno Mars, "Grenade"
I'll give props where they're due: Mars was a co-writer of Cee-Lo's magnificent "Fuck You," which was at Number 9 last week (it's since fallen to 17). "Grenade" is no "Fuck You," but its certainly more dynamic than "Just The Way You Are," and the vocals here are alright. I even detect a hint of Jeff Buckley in its phrasings. "Grenade" is the only the third song in this week's Top 10 that I don't actively dislike. Props. 3/5