An awesome video, for an awesome song, with awesome dancing and an awesome cameo

A gripe...

So I bought Margot and the Nuclear So-and-So's The Dust of Retreat this weekend at Borders, because A) it's one of the better albums I've heard in the past six months or so and B) it was $9.99.

However, I cannot recommend it.

Why? Because the version I bought was the 2006 version of the album, rereleased on Artemis Records less than a year after its first release on Standard Records. For this new release, the band re-sequenced the album. Okay, I thought, The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir did this with their debut, and arguably improved it. I liked the sequencing of Margot's album, but I figured they'd know what they were doing. But! On top of that, they re-recorded "A Light on a Hill" and had someone do new mixes of "Skeleton Key," ""Quiet as a Mouse" and "Talking in Code."

And "Skeleton Key," which was the best song on the original album, now sucks. It loses the immediacy of the original, as well as much of the original version's charm and appeal. The only parallel I can think of for this is from years back, when I was a fan of Chicago-based band Allister: a song of theirs was released on a label sampler, and I thought it was very good, but the version which ended up on the album had similarly been rendered lifeless by pointless MOR radio production. And that's what the new "Skeleton Key" sounds like: ProTool filtering and dullness.

"Skeleton Key" is now the second track on the album, and I haven't even been able to listen past it - that's how bad this newtered version of the song is. So, should you see this album somewhere and be tempted to buy it, I urge you to resist. I wish I didn't have to. Though you can, apparently, buy the Standard Records version here. That, at least, is worth a purchase (and highly recommended!)

Maybe later I'll post the mp3s of both "Skeleton Key"s for comparison purposes. Right now I'm trying to decide whether I can afford to buy the Standard Records version of the album in addition to the one I already have.

...And a plan
This summer, I've decided to write extensively on Pulp. This is both to clarify my own thoughts on their work and to stop myself from drunkenly elaborating to/annoying people around me on a weekly basis. I plan to analyze, at length, their final three albums (incorporating His 'n' Hers into my discussion of Different Class, discussing how they can be viewed as, essentially, a single narrative - sort of the equivalent of a three-act play.

Pulp is a singular band, I believe, because Jarvis Cocker writes very "literary" lyrics - that is, lyrics that tell stories about characters who are informed by his experiences, yet distinct (and, often, ironically distanced from the singer). They're a very intelligent band, to an extent that I'm not sure any other really equals. Anyone who procrastinated by reading my post on the song "This Is Hardcore" will have an idea where I'm coming from with this.

I don't expect it'll be as interesting to anyone else as it is to me, but like I said: it's mostly for my benefit, and partially for the benefit of people who've had to hear me formulating my theories over the past months. And I figure I'll at least give the random people linked here from Jeff's blog or Mat's or wherever a chance to read them. Because hey, Pulp's totally awesome.

I saw pork feet on sale at the grocery today. Who the hell would buy pork feet? It looked like they were pickled.

I have a heavy key-ring now: three keys from Qdoba and a little metal gizmo that I don't recognize, that Chris gave me Tuesday. They alone seem to speak of responsibility; I'm unused to their sensible weight. My past key-rings have had one key - at most, two. When I lived at Bromley, it was a single room key, when I went home I carried only a car key - depending on the door being unlocked to get back into the house at night. For this year, I've carried my mailbox key as well as a door one, but it's a small key. Light, carefree. My new key-ring makes me more depended-on, if not more dependable - which I may not yet be ready to be. It makes me feel old.
If you thought that was whiny and self-centered, then you should probably stop reading now...

So we talked about a poem in class today. This in itself is not remarkable, because we've been talking about poems all week. But what is remarkable is that I don't usually like poetry, that I'm usually strictly fiction, and yet I ended up having this experience of profound joy because of the professor's explication of the poem.

Which touched off some ruminations of my own.

Which you are welcome to ignore, because they're both about me, personally, and here more in order to get my thoughts out. Therefore they are quite dull. Let's start with the poem itself:

Sad Steps
Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate -
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.

The poet, old and with a weak bladder, is struck by the sight of the moon. The absurd juxtaposition of the quotidian, the dirty nature of life with this supposedly-elevated artistic vocation. The entire poem is centered on this bathos - deflating this artistic impulse. The second through fourth stanzas describe the same scene in increasingly ridiculous, grandiose language. The moon becomes a "lozenge of love," the clouds become "wolves of memory" (maybe; who the fuck knows what a wolf of memory is, anyway?). Larkin parodies the language and attitude of the lyrical poetry he feels an impulse to engage in. It's pretty funny, I think. But also provoking, at least to me.

Called to describe the beauty of what he sees, Larkin (or at least, we're supposed to read him as Larkin) can't help but become self-critical, self-parodic. The poem, implicitly, is asking "Is art transcendent? Or is it only a pose?" Larkin sees it as the latter, as something that can't help but become absurd in certain circumstances - but he longs for the time when he was younger and could be certain in his convictions, without the second-guessing he is plagued with in his old age.

My professor described the urge the poet feels as akin to a photographer, her leg bitten off by a rottweiler, lying on the ground and marveling at the beauty of her blood on the grass - wishing she'd brought her camera, so she could take a shot at it. We LOL'd.

But, more than any other poem I've read recently, it made sense to me. It's something I've struggled with - that urge. Both in the way that Larkin describes it and in the way that my professor recontextualized it. There are at least two parts to this, so here's where I go off the deep end and hope it makes sense.

First, this artistic urge or perspective; I've had for a few years now the awareness of how something I'm involved in, something I'm feeling, could be used for the sake of art. Like the photographer in the example, there are times when I've noticed myself stepping back - without even meaning to - and thinking about how what I'm feeling or going through could be used in my writing. This isn't uncommon, I know - I think I've read a Neil Gaiman essay/story where he discusses it, for instance(?) - but it's a damn strange feeling. Because it seems like it negates or invalidates what I am feeling at the time for me to be able to step back and think about it. Yet is it even possible for anyone to be unaware of the cultural meanings and clichés they act into, in 2006? Especially as a writer/artist who has decided to make the interrogation of cultural meanings and clichés a vocation?

So the question Larkin asks remains: is this awareness and self-ridicule/doubt inherent to being an artist? If so, is it possible to combat it or change it? Characteristically, Larkin doesn't provide an answer.

Along with this first part, there's a bathetic element to the feeling I've had. Just as Larkin mocks himself for even considering describing the moon in a romanticized, lyrical manner, I've found myself ridiculing certain emotions or sentiments of my own, because they seem so clichéd, so trite. This was especially true my first two years in college, because I felt (for reasons entirely my own fault) that I had to hide my emotions - had to be strong and solid and logical, because someone needed to fill that position. And so whenever I'd get a sentimental, emotional impulse, I'd feel like I needed to suppress it. To force myself to fit the role I'd forced myself into taking in the first place. It was a very self-conscious, intentional distancing from my own sensibilities, one that didn't end up being positive.

For the past year, though, I’ve felt like I was doing this much, much less. Maybe it’s the change in situation, maybe it’s that I’ve grown up a bit, I don’t know. Paradoxically, though, I do feel that I’m looking at what happens to me much less from a detached, critical, artistic perspective now – now, when I’m writing a novel that’s semi-pseudo-quasi-autobiographical.

But here I am, thinking and writing about my feelings about how I’m feeling about how I’m feeling. Endlessly referential. There’s philosophical discussion about the self-referentiality of the mind, I know, but I dropped the class on that before I got any answers. Maybe there's no solution to Larkin's dilemma, after all. The thing is, now that I’m doing more living and less thinking about living, I’m starting to reconsider my whole attitude to the second-guessing stasis I was in for so long.

To an extent, I still dislike it – it’s a product of the sad, stagnant self-awareness that permeates so much of art and culture that I find dull and pointless. But to an extent, I’m wondering, tonight: I felt paralyzed and unable to act on my emotions, but that was still, itself, a feeling! And therefore just as valid, albeit not as demonstrative of one as might have been expected? Maybe?

But I'm becoming melodramatic, boring even (who would have thought this possible?) myself. I’m do know that I'm much happier now that I’m less of whatever I was a year ago. I also have a story I should be writing. If anyone’s read this far, then know this: my next post will have something actually interesting/musical, I promise.

ATTN: Everybody who listens to music
There is a new KUPEK album out, called Before the Beginning and After the End. I may not have mentioned it here, and I am too damn lazy to check! It's free on his website, and can be easily downloaded. And you need to hear it! And if you like it, check out the Nameless, Faceless Compilation, which has my favorite KUPEK song on it. (That would be "You Practically Rock," and if it were possible to wear out mp3s like you can wear out vinyl, I would have gone through about three hundred LPs this spring!)
DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD

PS I bet a bunch of you got shit from the links in the last post, but only one person posted a comment (thanks, person!) and that makes me sad* so more posts should happen, pls.


* :(

I haven't updated in forevers!
And since so many of the very few people who occasionally check this blog are going away soon (and may be going to a land of slooooow internet!) I decided I should have a blowout celebration.
THIS CELEBRATION IS COMPOSED OF THINGS FOR YOU TO DOWNLOAD

Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
This just leaked last night. It's outtakes from Illinoise, and isn't set to be officially released until July(!) Part 1 Part 2

Outkast - "The Mighty O"
(Read this part in a Home Shopping Network voice) Have you been sitting around, head in your hands, thinking, "When are Outkast going to blow my motherfucking socks off with a new single?" I know I have! And now, here it is. This might not be the final mix, but it's Andre rapping again, and it's exactly what your speakers have been waiting to play. Don't hesitate, call now!

Walkmen - A Hundred Miles Off
Some of you are bigger Walkmen fans than others, but their upcoming album just hit the internet a few days back. You should give it a shot.


FREE SCOTT PILGRIM
FREE SCOTT PILGRIM
FREE SCOTT PILGRIM
If you've never read Scott Pilgrim, you really don't understand how incomplete your life is. This is a free Scott Pilgrim comic, so I don't feel bad about sharing it. Of all the things I have read in my life, and of all the things available here, Scott Pilgrim is most likely the absolute awesomest. The (tiny and very simple) program you'll need to read it on your computer can be downloaded here.

Jens Lekman and The Boy Least Likely To and Lucksmiths
Here's a bunch of EP and B-side stuff by these three great pop bands, mixed together into two zip files. The Jens songs are (unless I wasn't paying attention) all ones that didn't show up on either When I Said I Wanted to be Your Dog or Oh You're So Silent, Jens. The Boy Least Likely To B-sides are off singles from their extremely fun album, The Best Party Ever. The Lucksmiths songs are from their new EP for "A Hiccup in Your Happiness," the lead track from last year's Warmer Corners LP. You may remember it as being my second favorite album of the year - the Lucksmiths remain one of my most beloved bands, and their new songs on this EP are characteristically great. Get 'em all here and here.

Fred Thomas - Sink Like a Symphony
Those of you who know me well may be aware of my pseudo-obsession with Fred Thomas. He's the guy behind Saturday Looks Good to Me, which is one of my favorite bands. But on top of that, he's been a member of Flashpapr and Lovesick, both of which are very good bands. And for the past few years, along with constant single/album releases in SLGTM, he's been releasing solo albums/EPs. Which are totally great! AHHH HOW CAN HE BE SO TALENTED AND SO PROLIFIC!? Anyway, his new album is out this summer. It's his best yet. If you saw them open for Of Montreal at the Canopy this spring, you'll recognize "Wet as a Cloud," which was the best of the new songs he played that night. Smoke like a factory, steal my identity, sell it right back to me now.

Function - The Secret Miracle Fountain
Someone on a messageboard I frequent recommended this, and I'm glad I gave it a try. Most of the stuff in this post is very accessible - this album is not. But as the person recommending it said, it sounds exactly like you'd expect, based on the title. The music ranges from straightforward, catchy indie pop to drawn out sound collages - fitting, considering that it was recorded over a period of three years and many continents. It's ridiculously sprawling and occasionally challenging - particularly when the sound quality degrades as a result of the recordings' age and wear. But it's probably the most interesting, and potentially the most worthwhile, album I've heard so far this year. Be more adventurous, give it a few listens.