University-era repetition of the MML line, "The medium is the message", has numbed you off its essential meaning. Until Voxtrot, the self-titled debut album, came along.The verdict is laid all the way to Pitchfork: You can not take the EP out of Ramesh Srivastava. Now you know. Like the freckled, coming-of-age boys of whose hill his music is king, he was brilliant with the frayed and folded JD Salinger in his jeans back pocket already, and when, you had to go instate him to the age of MySpace with free coffee and Wi-Fi thrown in, well, of course he had to lose the paperback state.Voxtrot ran for swelling strings and diploma'd sound engineering when it had space for twice more tracks than it knew what to do with. The tunes were, at worst, tentative and overcompensating. At best, they could restore faith like a father who was no more or less than a hardworker.So do you shoo Mandy Moore back to love song hell? Or did Brittany Murphy do a damn nifty job for Paul Oakenfold?The answer is Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives, among the mostest songs to come out of that year. The answer is did you see this guy's Blogspot blog back in the day? Is he 23 or what? What is wrong with loving Morrissey to a fault anyway? The answer is going from "Cheer me up, I am a miserable fuck" to "I have to lose my idols to find my voice" in the same breath.And if none of those answers matter, Voxtrot never stopped giving you the sort of sneaky tween-age flashbacks that trigger either an epiphany or a breakdown. The boy you refused to kiss, the teacher who tore you apart, the best friend you decided one day to leave behind.You suck it up, that's what. Click the goddamn forward button. Await the next album as it is only likely to be better, given this one kind of really blows sometimes. Go to sleep knowing that, anytime people aren't wowing at someone who's just wow, they be laughing at him. But, please, no sympathy for fools like you either.
Comments (9)
when it's over we'll be holding one another we only ever wanted to feel you (killer last line) we are all just sinking for something