$3 Music Review: Minus the Bear - Omni

The most important thing I learned about Minus the Bear while poking about the internet was that their name stems from an inside joke regarding a date review of a friend of the band that was something like, "You know that 70s show, BJ and the Bear? It was like that minus the bear."

The next important thing I learned was that they are a PNW band - specifically from Seattle. That earns them some (unearned) points.

The least important thing was what the music critics thought of this album. I started researching how I was supposed to feel about this band and their latest album a while ago after enjoying it during a treadmill session, and got a bit too much snark in the face to listen objectively to the music for a while. So I set it aside for a week and came back to it.

For the record, the critics are singing, in tune, that this album is like the sonic version of Lieutenant Dangle putting the moves on you - a completely limp, over-blowdried attempt to be supersexy.

What I hear are very listenable tunes that work well as workout tunes and work tunes, as long as you don't listen too closely to the lyrics, which are, at times Dangle-worthy.

For instance (real lyrics):

Summer Angel

And when her kisses came they rain down

And when by body moved she made sound

(chorus) My summer angel keeps me on the run

My Time (a great summer song in spite of lyrics like these:)

And you're holding on to me like an old love 

That you know every inch of 

When I feel you start to go

Take it slow, 'til your body's saying more....baby!

Hold Me Down (another pretty song, in spite of:)

And I'm in the wind.

I am going to let it take me where it may.

Maybe it lifts me to New Orleans, 

Or the dark streets of L.A.

The dark streets of L.A.! I love that! And if you order now, you get gems like, "Running out of excuses/When we know what the truth is," and "I will surely chase you down/Lure you in with a lonely sound!"


No, seriously, this is a keeper for both me and The Captain, despite (and maybe, just a little bit because of) the incredibly awkwardly corny lyrics. If nothing else, check out a summer stand-out song in this video for My Time, with Extra Sparkle Motion!. (YouTube, you better work for me this time.)


On the cold/lukewarm/hot scale, I'm giving it an enthusiastic lukewarm.

$3 Music Review: The National - High Violet

I had this review completely written, pasted something into it, went to delete the last pasted thing, got a little handsy with the touch pad on my Macbook and mistakenly deleted the whole thing, and Blogger helpfully auto-saved it at that moment.

Gone.

And it was so important!

If not important, than at least an hour of my life.

Bereft.

Should I start over?

Here's a shortened version, because I've thrown the earbuds out of my ears in frustration and made a pouty noise, so I'm not in the same place, musically.

I've been cueing up The National's new release, High Violet, in the car, listening for a few songs, and then itchily switching the iPhone to Passion Pit or Two Door Cinema Club for a happiness break. My mood has been hormonally blackened over the past few days, and The National is not safe under severely stormy conditions. However, like Volcano Choir, the sound, the layers of sound, and even the mood of the sound, were heightened exponentially once played through my earbuds.

And what is the mood of the music? Um, brooding without being whiny. Deep without being dark. Thoughtful without being navel-gazing. It's best when the drums are anchored firmly to the bass to match that deep voice.  It's the stuff on your iPod that gives your walk around the city that extra gravitas.

Critics aren't sure whether this album stands up to the (what was that word they used? divinity? excellenceness? superlove?) esteem in which they hold their earlier release, Boxer, but they mostly like it. And after a chat with my music therapist, Dean, and some YouTube time, I found that Boxer (which had gone unnoticed by me on account of my nerdism) does hold some divine songs, including "All the Wine," which is a cocktail hour playlist MUST.  However, this one has some outstanding cuts as well, such as "Bloodbuzz Ohio," "Terrible Love," "Sorrow," "England," you know, I'm starting to like the whole thing.

Now a word about The Voice. The National's lead, Matt Berninger, has a distinctive buttery sleepy baritone that, once you see the box that the voice comes wrapped in, gives you one of those Rick Astley moments (THAT voice comes out of THAT face?). However, absorbing the two helps give the songs more of a whimsical vibe then if the words and that voice had come out of the large, bearlike fellow you might have originally imagined. You can experience the voice+quirkiness best in this video.

My Final Opinion re The National's High Violet on the cold/lukewarm/hot scale: Hot.

$3 Music Review: The Hold Steady

Okay, the last time we met, I was griping about aging while new young bands keep popping up with newer, better versions of the music I used to listen to.  Now we are going to talk about a band that has been around for a while, aging along with me (although on a parallel track started somewhat later).

Craig Finn, the front man for the Hold Steady will turn 40 next year, and his lyrics, if not his music, is showing signs of someone starting to look behind him at the damn kids and their destructive behavior, which he realizes is not unlike his own at their age. Now he's writing lyrics like, "You ask me not to do it, but you can't control the kids...We used to want it all, now we just want a little bit." If the lyrics have become more wistful, the volume knob is still at eleven.

The Hold Steady's latest album, Heaven is Whenever, is more of the same Springsteen-heavy club rock, even more so without the more playfully inventive stylings of their former keyboardist, Franz Nicolay (for instance, there are no harpsichord solos, such as in "One for the Cutters" from the Stay Positive album).

Reasons to avoid The Hold Steady's Heaven is Whenever:

1. Through three full listens, I have yet to find a "sing-a-long" song (Call back! from the song "Constructive Summer"! Get it?), such as "Sequestered in Memphis," from Stay Positive.
2. These songs have very few hooks or memorable melodies - they have all been wrapped around Finn's lyrics almost as a second thought, so that the music seems to have been forced to fit.  Not that that is not the case with all Hold Steady songs to a degree. There are a lot of words there. But here it seems like these lyrics were fitted a little uncomfortably to these club rock anthems.
3. The lack of hooky songs puts Craig Finn's voice front and center. The Village Voice's Rob Harvilla euphemistically notes that Finn's vocal efforts convey a "melodic disregard." At other times Harvilla likens his style to a carnival barker. Both are accurate.

Reasons to listen to The Hold Steady's Heaven is Whenever multiple times:

Those words. Craig Finn's lyrics are always a highlight.  What a gift of poetry. Here are some snippets from Heaven is Whenever:

There were a couple pretty crass propositions 

There were some bugs in the bars, there was a kid camped out by the coat check

She said the theme of this party's the industrial age

And you came in dressed like a train wreck

I know, right? Or how about this: 

There was that whole weird thing with the horses

I think they know exactly what happened, I don't think it needs any explaining

I'm pretty sure I wasn't your first choice

I think I was the last one remaining

or this: 

Don't it suck about the succubi, the bloodsuckers and the parasites?

They're never funny and they're all so scared to die

All the small talk seems like suicide, the spiderwebs with the legs and eggs and eyes

They creep up from behind

or, finally, this:

That one girl got me cornered in the kitchen, I said I'll do anything but clean

She wants to know what I like being better, a trash bin or an ice machine

Some writer's by the fridge, said he didn't make the gig, wants to know if I was drunk

He said some kids that he knows from the net said the sound kinda sucks

Yes. They play bar band music around these lyrics. That's the beauty and the sadness of it. Sometimes I feel like I should just bind the lyrics in a book, and then read them while listening to Philip Glass.

I'll listen some more, and I suspect that The Captain (although he is out rescuing citizens from themselves today as I am playing these songs on repeat) will enjoy it as well. It is welcome in the Driving With The Captain Playlist. But I don't think it will attain the playlist status of my other Mother's Day Music, or even of their former album, Stay Positive.

Of my new rating system of hot/lukewarm/cold, I'm giving this a Lukewarm.

$3 Music Review: Two Door Cinema Club

To the basement, people! To the basement!

Oh, I really like this. Witty. Crisp. Fast moving. Pretty tunes and harmonies.

This is Two Door Cinema Club's debut album, "Tourist History," released in March of 2010.  According to Wiki, they are from Northern Ireland and their band name was born when one of the band members mispronounced the local cinema, Tudor Cinema.

These fellows sound young. So many members of my favorite bands are so not of my generation. I know I should still be listening to Elton John, or occasionally singing along to a Shakira song in the car (well, my hips don't lie), but I refuse to be age-appropriate when it comes to music.

The music that is being produced (although not played on the radio) today is so superior to what I listened to as a kid, I have no problem in moving on. I know I am not alone (hi, Chauncey), but I realize I may be in the minority among forty-somethings. (forty-something - not baby boomer. You may refer to   this earlier post that proves I am NOT a baby boomer.

Those of the Sound Opinions ilk, I give this an enthusiastic "buy it."

$3 Music Review: Volcano Choir

I'm listening to Volcano Choir. The Captain is enduring Volcano Choir.

Volcano Choir is everything The Captain cannot abide: repetition, unfamiliar chords, dissonance, unintelligible lyrics, and no catchy hooks.

None of those things disqualifies it for goodness in my opinion. However, it still has to be good.

Volcano Choir is a collaboration between Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and the Milwaukee-based instrumental band Collections of Colonies of Bees (which is not a bad attempt at Best Band Name Ever, and positively affects my opinion of their music).

Most of the music on their 2009 album "Unmap" is an interesting juxtaposition of soothing drones, harmonies, choppy bits of words and phrases, as well as dissonances, unconventional percussion, and experimental instrumentation - at times ethereal, divine and chantlike, at others, clanky and demanding. I would give four stars (out of the five-star iTunes system) to at least four out of the nine cuts on the album, but I'm not sure what I would DO with them.  For instance, the opening cut, "Husks and Shells," is a beautiful blend of voices, save for the fact that I swear that's my Polar heart rate monitor beeping in the background throughout, as if I had exceeded my target heart rate during my workout. It is not, for the most part, relaxing music, nor would it fit in a party or workout mix. So when do you pull out the experimental, drone-intensive, attention-sustaining prog-alt?

What's great about it, however, is that it does not get in the way of my words as I write this, as there are very few full sentences to vie for my attention. In fact, it may be a nice change of pace at work, when I have the office to myself (The Captain and my boss share many of the same musical tastes). And now that I've moved it from the stereo to my earphones (The Captain was getting tense), I'm enjoying it more, especially "Still." And now that I am re-listening to "Seeplymouth" (not a misspelling), I may put some of these on a few playlists after all.

Just not the ones that I play for The Captain.