Blog

Islands
Knitting Factory main stage
Dec 6 2005

Yes I did take this shitty photo, and some others I took are up at CMJ’s Relay anti-blog.

Short: Islands played their first show in New York City last night, on the second to last day of their first headlining tour. They had a total of seven members, who looked and kinda acted like a model UN club. They also had tropical rhythms! Violins! Bass clarinet! I think Nick, Jaime, and Co. totally satisfied the Unicorns-hungry crowd.

Long:
Though I am somewhat biased because I have a bit of history with the Unicorns, I thought they met or exceeded the expectations put on them by ex-Unicorns fans. At least there was only one Unicorns request — for “Jellybones”? natch.

Not that Nick Diamonds (who co-wrote and co-sang for the Unicorns) would have wanted to do a ‘Corns request, but the song would have been impossible anyway. Nick’s bandleader for the Islands, without Alden there to sing the second lead vocal “Jellybones”? would have just sounded odd. In fact, the best part of the Unicorns were its two parts. Nick and Alden traded verses, sparred through songs, outdid each other with layers of catchy hooks that never needed to be repeated throughout each track. By having two vocalists playing two characters, we didn’t have to accept one, both, or either of them as the real deal, as when they sang, “I write the songs / I write the songs / You’re doing it wrong / You ARE doing it wrong!â€?

Nick’ the only voice (or the most prominent one) amid a new expanded group of seven members. But he’s smart enough to still not force us to accept his narrative. And you can tell he’s matured over the last couple of years. For all of Islands’ cutesy-ness (awkward, dancing Asian viola player, all the members dressed white, synchronized handclaps), Nick’s songs are less about private little in-fights and have expanded to things like the African diamond mines and anorexia, though even those topics are still wrapped up intimate little love songs. He said, “this next song’s about recycling? before about three tracks, and though he was dead dry and made people laugh, I know there are actually songs about the environment on Return To The Sea, though the audience didn’t know yet.

In fact, while the expanded cast can’t completely make up for Alden’s voice and characters in the songs, the viola, violin, bass clarinet respond to each other and counter Nick’s lyrics, take the place of Alden’s responses. One great example is the song “Ruff Gem,” which the Unicorns played live but makes its official debut on the Islands record. Nick (and Jaime, drummer for the Unicorns and Islands) replace the sugary immediate gratification of the song’s bouncy “Didn’t Start The Fire”? keyboard line with strings, breaking up its parts between instruments. It’s glossy but gains depth, despite said violist jumping and dancing like a nerd, and the pre-planned handclaps, it’s a better song after the Islands treatment.

What Islands can’t compete with is the amount of “ohhhs” and “how cutes!” that came from the audience. Girls loved the Unicorns, and while Nick still had a bit of that worn look that came with later Unicorns shows, the rest of the band had the enthusiasm that made the Unicorns’ first shows so much fun. I could ignore the infantilizing of the Asian band members (motherfuckers did this to Deerhoof too), the impatient looks on audience members’ faces when the band played slower instrumentals, even could ignore the bass clarinetist making out with who was clearly the most determined of the girls waiting after the show, but it does lead to some of the shit that happened to the Unicorns (over touring, (gulp) over interviewing, girls stealing your matching outfits just because), and if Nick already looks worn on their first tour, a year from now he could be
worse off. As I said, I’m biased, so I just hope for the best for Nick, Alden, and Jaime.

That said, Mark, who was the band’s caretaker on the road and who did sound last night and recorded Islands’ record said that he’ll be recording Alden’s first post-Unicorns album too. I’ve heard some of his solo stuff as well (I’ll post an mp3 above) and I think it’s wonderful.

Animal Collective
Feels

(So I want to talk about some shit most people have heard but I still want to talk about.)

Why are songs either about falling in or falling out of love? There are barely any songs that say, “Things are okay if a little boring.�? Just a handful of “I still care,�? songs exist. And why are all of them being written by Low, or worse, Mates of State?

Though there are better (maybe), more complex (possibly) songs on Animal Collective’s Feels than “Purple Bottle,�? the song does accomplish something rare. It races frantically to tell the listener about a girl in a way that’s only the slightest bit touched (tainted?) with lust. It’s not a crush song, it’s not a song about falling in love, but about staying in love, a few months in. Granted it saves a line for naked-praise, but I’m going to overlook that for three paragraphs or so.

Anyway, “The Purple Bottle” begins with rolling pounds on thump drums, but then adds chopstick ticks so nervous they sound like fingernails tapping on a desk. Avey Tare’s voice rushes to keep up with the rhythms, as if his mind is outrunning his vocals in its need to share details while he’s still drunk on them. Sure, there are lines like, “I wear a coat of feelings and they are loud,�? that are revealing to be revealing about being revealing. That’s fine. And there are lines that point to obsessive detailing (“knows her chinese ballet�?), which may work against my argument here.

But more telling are these lines, “ Sometimes I’m quiet / And sometimes you’re quiet / Hallelujah!” The first is the kind of over detail that could be from the beginning of a relationship, sure. But the “hallelujah,�? points elsewhere. The band sighs and stretches out the word, letting the Hallelujah’s many meanings stretch out. Hallelujah’s a special speech act, it’s a word expressing praise and joy, but it also means thanks. Though it might be a stretch to call it performative speech, in this performance you realize that “thank you�? is something that happens after other things have been done, given, shared. In other words, it’s more likely to occur in the middle of a relationship, after a little give and take, and not in the first awkward ‘getting to know all about you’ moments. After all, when you’re pursuing someone or when you’ve first fallen for someone, you have nothing to thank them for, except being naked once in a while.

Bizzy and I were in a bar a couple of months ago, gawking at a dude and girl making out heavily right before last call. They were kissing so intensely that we figured that they must have just met. But then I said, “Holy, shit, what if they’ve been dating for years?�? It was scary, and encouraging too. The question contained the possibility that people really do keep up that kind of enthusiasm years after days of kissing the same person. “The Purple Bottle” contains the possibility that dudes that will still be writing hymns for their girlfriends/wives months or years down the line.

Although I’ve loathed the idea of writing a music blog, and even had the tagline to this page be “Nothing about music, ever,” I’ve just spent the last week or so installing wordpress and working on cleaning up the code around here in order to turn this into a music blog.

Why?

In October I started a job as an editor at CMJ New Music Monthly and New Music Report. At that point, music writing stopped being a sort of fun hobby and became my career. I was a fulltime freelance writer before, but I wrote about health and dabbled in music writing. Now I’m paid to write full time, and it’s time for me to start writing about music even when I’m not working. Music writing is work, technique, craft, not art or spontaneous creativity. And like playing music, it gets better through doing the damn thing.

I’m incredibly lucky to get to write about music all day, and to have people pay me to tell other people what I think. But I’m going to use this space to write daily (or near daily!) posts in formats that CMJ just doesn’t allow. For instance, they don’t do track reviews. They don’t do reviews over 270 words. And they don’t do concert reviews. Also I’m going to use this space to let friends keep up with what I’ve been doing, and, I hope, let new people know what I’ve been doing. Finally I’m hoping that this blog does two of my favorite functions of music criticism: 1) alert readers to recordings/artists they might not of heard of and 2) give readings of recordings/artists that could make someone who has overlooked said recs/artists take another listen. Also, I hope to use the words “weiner” and “fart” on a regular basis, just like old times.