The Finger Points Outwards - No. 49

Anyone want a druggie's Hulkmobile?

Philip Roth retires

The Mad Men power rankings (which I can read now that I've watched Season 5)

Why Gatsby is so great

Which Bond villain plans would be economically viable?

Arion's Archaic Art

The 15 Best Coldplay Songs

 

Apart from Radiohead, the other major band I saw play this week was Coldplay. In contrast to Radiohead, most of my favourite Coldplay tracks are the obvious ones - the roof-raisers, the confetti-droppers, the light-holders, the leg-lifters. Also, a chunk of them come from the greatest Coldplay album of them all, the beautiful 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head'. These are my favourite 15 tracks from Jonny Buckland's band:

1. Clocks
2. The Scientist
3. In My Place
4. Lost!
5. Viva La Vida
6. Violet Hill
7. Shiver
8. Yellow
9. Lovers In Japan
10. Paradise
11. Speed Of Sound
12. Politik
13. Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall
14. Warning Sign
15. What If

The 15 Best Radiohead Songs

 

Seeing Radiohead tonight at Rod Laver Arena I was struck by the following things:

1) Gee, they've changed a lot since I saw them on the tour after OK Computer.
2) Thom Yorke's voice is amazing. Well, duh. But on CD it sounds like part of the atmosphere, it's only when you see it live you think about how those sounds are coming from someone's throat.
3) Ed O'Brien has managed to massage his backing vocals to sound like Thom Yorke's echo.
4) Who were the young hipster girls sitting in front of us? Judging by their reactions to the songs, I think they started liking Radiohead when they could flog 'In Rainbows' off the internet for free.
5) The benefit of being an 'albums band' is that Radiohead can play whatever the hell they want and be assured that a good portion of the audience will know it. Alright, everyone knows 'Creep' and 'Paranoid Android', but no-one would really go home that disappointed if they didn't play them. They can pull out any song as the mood strikes them and know that it will be someone's favourite.

With that in mind, here are my 15 favourite Radiohead tracks:

1. Sulk
2. Jigsaw Falling Into Place
3. The Bends
4. Karma Police
5. Reckoner
6. There There
7. Let Down
8. Idioteque
9. 2 + 2 = 5
10. Fake Plastic Trees
11. Creep
12. Paranoid Android
13. The Pyramid Song
14. A Wolf At The Door
15. The National Anthem

‘Lonerism’ and the Rise of the Aussie Isolationist Muso

Tame Impala’s latest album, ‘Lonerism’ is, as the title implies, a solitary kind of record. The band itself hails from Perth, well known to be geographically the most isolated city on the planet. Most of the album was recorded by one man, Kevin Parker. Parker has said about the album that it in part arose from the realisation that “I’m just a total outcast. I can’t really talk to anyone without feeling stupid … sometimes I just want to run home and never come out of my bedroom again.” The music backs up this feeling; most of the tracks are dreamy soundscapes that very much sound like one guy twiddling some knobs (pun not intended) in his bedroom. We’re not exactly talking Syd Barrett’s ‘The Madcap Laughs’ here, and Tame Impala’s first album, ‘Innerspeaker’, sounded like the work of a band (even if it may not have been), but it’s clear that this album doesn’t fit the Cold Chisel blueprint of Australian rock.

Which got me to thinking – a lot of Australian ‘bands’ that have found international acclaim (and  their way into my CD collection) over the past decade or so have also tended to driven by their own Kevin Parker-isolated-muso-types. The Vines’ sound was largely a reflection of Craig Nicholls’ part-schizophrenic mindset. Luke Steele of the Sleepy Jackson and Empire of the Sun is the archetype of the ‘temperamental-isolated-Antipodean-genius ‘, managing to work his way through more ‘bandmates’ than single releases.  While the circumstances that led to the departure of two-thirds of Wolfmother’s line-up were somewhat different, their departure still solidified the notion that Andrew Stockdale was the driving force behind that group. The three great hopes of Aussie indie dance, the Presets, Cut Copy, and Midnight Juggernauts, have an average of precisely 3.00 members. And the wildly lauded ‘Since I Left You’ by the Avalanches was basically the product of a few guys’ record collections. Only Jet (and possibly Wolfmother) fit the mould of your classic pub-rock band.

Head back to the ‘90s though, and there were plenty of bands that gained their popularity from making a racket live. Powderfinger, You Am I, Grinspoon, Jebediah, the Superjesus, Custard, The Cruel Sea, Spiderbait, Regurgitator, and of course Silverchair, were all bands whose music you could go to a sweaty bar and get drunk to, rather than lie on your bed and play it through your laptop speakers.  Yet few of these bands (Silverchair being the obvious exception) had that much success overseas  (some deservedly so). The recent crop of introverted musicians has been more likely to show up in NME, Pitchfork, or even non-Aussie Rolling Stone than the raucous alternative rockers of the decade before.

Part of the reason for this may be that the more recent crop of bands are better (I think they are, but then I’m a Beatles fan and social introvert).  But I think their success says something too about how the music industry has changed; in an increasingly globalised and digitalised world there are no ‘scenes’, or rather there is one global ‘scene’, and this has allowed the isolationist to flourish. Listeners, both in Australia and overseas, have many more opportunities now to discover the precocious muso twiddling away in the bedroom (sigh … there really is no good way to phrase that). In years past, bands like Empire of the Sun and Midnight Juggernauts wouldn’t have got past the bouncer at the door. In the past, your band needed to be a ‘gang’. Now you just need some friends to play the parts when you’re touring.

(By the by, I recommend ‘Lonerism’; I think it’s a step above ‘Innerspeaker’ in that the tracks on that album tended to blend too much into one another. They blend on ‘Lonerism’ as well, but each track also has its own distinct ideas to make it stand out.)  

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 48

Pitchfork's ode to 30 years of the CD

Is NBA star Andrew Bynum in costume or not?

Graphically communicating the US election

The appeal of Mario's gold coins

The Wooden Finger Five: November 2012

This past month, I've been making my way through the Pitchfork 500, which was Pitchfork's list of the best songs from 1977 up until 2008 (when the list was released). To date I've really only got through the 1977-1979 and 1984-1986 segements of the list. There were a lot of old disco tracks, a lot of early electronic music, a lot of early hiphop, and these gems:

1. Street Hassle - Lou Reed

I feel like I should have discovered this track by the Louster earlier - it's one of his best and most definitive. It clocks in at over 11 minutes but never gets tried, as it's split into three distinct sections. Section 1 is about a woman picking up a male prostitute (very Lou Reed). Section 2 is where the woman's dead from drugs, and the dealer is telling the prostitute he has to get the woman out (ultra Lou Reed). Section 3 is about nothing in particular, but it sounds beautiful and wraps up the suite nicely. Bruce Springsteen has a very cool guest spot as well.

2. Outdoor Miner - Wire

You'll see most of my picks for this month are real downers, but this is a sweet little tune, which at least one person thinks is 'an abstract interpretation of the experiences of a kind of inchworm known as the serpentine miner'. Well, that sounds arty enough for Wire to be true. For a band that did a lot of arty stuff though, they also put out a bunch of classic pop tunes.

3. Pink Turns To Blue - Husker Du

Husker Du's 'Zen Arcade' is meant to be essentially a concept album about a boy going out in the world and finding out how shit everything is. And this song is about the most shitkicking, gut-wrenching of them all; you can pretty much guess what pink turning to blue refers to (hint: think 'Street Hassle' above), but what makes it worse is that this girl seems like she was the only good thing in this world to our narrator. The melody isn't depressing though - it's as catchy as hell.

4. Kerosene - Big Black

I vaguely remembered that Steve Albini was the producer of Nirvana's 'In Utero' but I didn't know that he had his own band called Big Black. Remember those brutal, bleeding tracks on 'In Utero' like 'Scentless Apprentice' and 'Radio Friendly Unit Shifter'? This was kind of the antecedent to them. Albini's lyrics aren't necessarily subtle, but he is clever in the way he builds his narrative, as you gradually realise just how horrifying it is.

5. Primitive Painters - Felt

This is one of those songs that feels like it was the soundtrack to every mid-'80s movie, but it wasn't actually on the soundtrack to any of them. (I know. I checked to see where it was from.) It's very much like the Cocteau Twins in that Robin Guthrie produced it, and his bandmate Elizabeth Fraser sang backing vocals, and you can't understand a single lyric. But it would still be suitably atmospheric even without those touches.

Will The Real Steve Smith Please Stand Up? ... Please Stand Up?

Predictions For the 2012-13 NBA Season

 

Most Valuable Player: Carmelo Anthony (New York) - yes, it sounds ludicrous, but I think the Knicks will have a much-improved season, and because Melo scores the most points (and there'll be voter fatigue for LeBron) he'll get the nod. But I still think LeBron will actually have the best season.
Rookie of the Year: Anthony Davis (New Orleans)
Defensive Player of the Year: Tyson Chandler (New York) - Chandler will get part of the rest of the credit for the Knicks' surge.
Most Improved Player: James Harden (Houston)
Coach of the Year: Mike Woodson (New York) - And Woodson will get the other part of the credit.

All-Star Teams:

Eastern Conference: Starters - Derrick Rose (Chicago), Dwyane Wade (Miami), Carmelo Anthony (New York), LeBron James (Miami), Kevin Garnett (Boston); Bench - Rajon Rondo (Boston), Deron Williams (Brooklyn), Chris Bosh (Miami), Josh Smith (Atlanta), Tyson Chandler (New York), Al Horford (Atlanta), Joakim Noah (Chicago), with an injured Rose to be replaced by Paul George (Indiana).

Western Conference: Starters - Jeremy Lin (Houston) - there's a lot of voters in China!, Kobe Bryant (LA Lakers), Kevin Durant (Oklahoma City), Blake Griffin (LA Clippers), Dwight Howard (LA Lakers); Bench - Chris Paul (LA Clippers), Tony Parker (San Antonio), James Harden (Houston), Andre Iguodala (Denver), Kevin Love (Minnesota), Anthony Davis (New Orleans), Marc Gasol (Memphis).

Eastern Conference Champion: Miami
Western Conference Champion: San Antonio

NBA Champion: Miami