Although I purchased this album at midnight on the day of its release, I didn't hear it as a whole until today. Part of the reason for that is that I have been listening to live versions of the tracks from the 1/9/07 show at Plush for some time now. But Matt LeMay's mediocre review in Pitchfork played a role as well. As I already wrote in "my Live Journal entry about the measure of my devotion"...
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Posts by cbertsch
The Sublation of Hippie and Punk
To Be Continued
I've been scarce of late. Sometimes I just don't have the urge to share, even where music is concerned. But I'm getting back into a more outgoing frame of mind. I have a huge backlog of records to write about, most of them members of the substantial collection of clearance specials, promos and freebies that I've acquired over the past decade. It's a lot to sort through, but I'm making headway. ...
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There Is Always a Trigger
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Over the summer "I wrote about rediscovering Superchunk's ??On the Mouth??":http://mog.com/cbertsch/blog_post/110738, a record I listened to a lot when it came out but hadn't paid attention to in years. I had reason to listen to it again today and remembered how much I adore "Swallow That," which is slower and longer than most of their songs but all the more intense because of it. I'd place it ...
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Is This Pop Enough For You?
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Artist:Steven Malkmus
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Album:Live
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Track:Merry Go Round
In "a recent interview for Pitchfork":http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/47563-stephen-malkmus-talks-itrashi, Steven Malkmus, discussing the band's forthcoming album ??Real Emotional Trash??, states that, "there's not really anything that's pop on there." This got me thinking about the show I attended last January 9th at Plush in Tucson, where, although most of the new material he play...
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Legitimation Generation
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Album:Released 1985-1995 / Unreleased
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Back when Kronos Quartet released their cover - if you can call it that, given the context - of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze," I was excited. Raised on classical music, in a household where my father didn't want me to play rock on his turntable because the beat would "hurt the needle," I welcomed the opportunity to declare, "If it's good enough for a world-famous string quartet, it should be goo...
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Cover Me
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Album:Live New Order Cover on PRI's Fair Game
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Track:Age of Consent
I haven't been writing here lately, both because I've been too busy and because I'm self-conscious about writing repeatedly about what I like best. But today, with a light rain falling on the paper walls of the future, I don't care. A while back I mentioned my excitement at the new record by Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew. I've come to realize that, of all the bands of their Pitchfork-inflect...
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Song of the West
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One of the most interesting things about Stephen Malkmus, whom I regard as the best songwriter of his generation, is that his solo work marks such a clear break from what he did with Pavement, even though the musical continuity is clear. It's in the _lyrics_ that the divergence manifests itself. Although his dexterous way with words has always been in evidence, his solo work abandons the themes...
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Blissful Desolation
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Sometimes I get in the mood for a particular sound. And sometimes that sound is specific, not to a genre or even to an artist, but to a single record. This week it's The Cure's second album ??Seventeen Seconds??. I imagine that many fans of the band's previous album and singles were baffled by the the departure it signalled. It's so spare, so tonally restricted. And it lacks the bottom end of o...
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Not Feeling It
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I've been trying to like the new Bruce Springsteen record. But I just can't get into it. To be honest, though I was greatly pleased at the response ??The Rising?? received, I wasn't that into that album from a musical standpoint either. Mind you, I think the lyrics on both that one and the new one are strong. Unlike Robert Smith of The Cure - another one of my longtime favorites, despite the va...
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The Goal Was Never There
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Track:"A Forest"
Being a lyrics man, I've always liked those moments in song where two words seem to converge. The conclusion to Pavement's "Cut Your Hair", where "career" starts sounding like "Korea" is a well-known example of this phenomenon. And I do love Pavement. But my favorite instance of this sort of convergence is in The Cure's "A Forest." Mind you, I suspect that it's not as perceptible to those who grew
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