Top 10 2K11, a Tummiscratch List
I know it’s been a while, but this is important. I’m bringing this blog out of hibernation for another one of our famed end-of-year lists. Typically these lists are reserved for albums we liked that were released over the course of this year. Unfortunately, I really didn’t care for much of anything that came out this year, other than the Men and Condominium full lengths, but that would make for a pretty sad list. So it looks like I’ll be dedicating a list to the only music I really did enjoy this year, Turquoise Jeep.
Few things are known about this elusive rap collective, whose love for breakfast foods is matched only by their love for blowjobs. Seriously, it’s strange how little is known about a “band” this popular. Many of their videos, and there are many, have near a million views on Youtube (“Lemme Smang It” is approaching 7 million), and yet they have no Wikipedia page. Sure, plenty of Youtube celebrities don’t have Wikipedia entries, but Turquoise Jeep is an actual band that performs live (including a riotous headlining set at Austin’s Fun Fun Fun Fest), has a full-length album for sale on iTunes, and has been covered by MTV News. Their official website reveals nothing about their hometown (listed on their Facebook page as “All Across the Nation”) or any kind of back story. When you call them (which a friend of mine did in an effort to book them) you will be told, “Oh sorry this is Leon from the record label. You want to call their management.” When you call their management, you’ll speak to Leon Imperial, who is just rapper Flynt Flossy using a different name. Their “behind the scenes” videos, which is basically just the crew hanging around a recording studio they’re pretending to use, hint at just how shoddy their actual recording set-up is.
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that Turquoise Jeep is more than just a comedy group. They’re methodical and careful about how they present themselves, aided by hilariously fake facial hair and a good dose of method acting. What’s even more commendable is their ability to write seriously incredible pop songs. When lines like, “Go grab my belt, you need a spanking baby” get stuck in your head for upwards of several weeks, you’d probably have a hard time dismissing them as just a comedy group, too. With that said, here are my top ten favorite Turquoise Jeep lyrics and their respective videos. Happy Sexgiving:
10. Whatchyamacallit: “This position I invent is crazy.”
from “Licky Sticky”
9. Flynt Flossy: “We could play a game (Twister!)”
from “Ooh Ahh Sound”
8. Flynt Flossy: “She got a sexy thing
Go touch a sexy thing
She got a sexy friend
Go touch a sexy friend”
from “Did I Mention I Like to Dance?”
7. Flynt Flossy: “She was just a fling
She just suck my thing
She don’t compare to you
You my wifee boo”
from “SHUYAMOUF”
6. Yung Humma: “This is what I like to call ‘smash/bang fusion’
Gotta focus momma, you don’t wanna get a cooch contusion”
from “Lemme Smang It”
5. Young Humma: “When I say ‘fried,’ I’m talking breakfast eggs
But when I say ‘fertilize,’ those the eggs between the legs
She began to blush, I heard her coochie whistle
She was fiending for the heat up out of Humma’s missle”
from “Fried or Fertilized”
4. Yung Humma: “When I look at you baby, I think of breakfast:
Pancakes, scrambled eggs, hash browns, and cheese grits
You got warm buns, let me hop in the middle
And I could have it taste somethin’ like a Cheese McGriddle
Yummmm”
from “Sex Syrup” (for whatever reason, this video refuses to be imbeded, so click on the song to play it.)
3. Flynt Flossy: “Guess what nigga,
I ate dat ass
I ate dat ass
I ate dat ass
I ate dat ass”
from “Stretchy Pants”
2. Slick Mahoney: “If you even had a choice, I know who you would choose
It starts with ‘S’ and ends with ‘lick,’ how could you be confused?”
from “Go Grab My Belt”
1. “Why I Gotta Wait??”
Every line in this song is golden. EVERY. LINE.
Suburbia I Keep Giving You Pieces of Myself
As I see it there are two ways to get yourself reviewed positively these days (at least in music and this is discounting having your record label pay Rolling Stone to give it a minimum of three stars): 1. Do something wholly original, or at least “original.” or 2. Do something that has been done countless times before but do it with as heaping helping of an ineffable quantity of “panache.” And, at the most basic level, what determines which of those two groups a type of music will fall in to is time. Obviously, I guess, but I just want to make the terms within which I will be working clear at the outset. Read more…
The other day, incidentally while sitting through the previews for the Sarah Palin documentary (about which I’d like to say a word or two in the very near future), I was ordering in my head a cursory list of the records that have come out this year that I’ve enjoyed the most. During this process I saw a slight pattern that doesn’t usually happen with me, namely, and as the title of this post would suggest, that I have become obsessed with a disproportionate number of EPs. Read more…
Ate a Peach
I have become obsessed with Giant Peach in the last two days. There is no accounting for it. I’m not sure if it’s reasonable to say that an EP is my album of the year, especially one that I’ve only been aware of for three days at this point, but I want to. I want to, man.
I think rock critics use the words “subtle” and “grower” more often than not as shorthand for “this is a record that I like quite a lot that I’m not entirely sure I can objectively defend.”
With that in mind, Giant Peach’s EP People Don’t Believe Me is subtle, it’s definitely a grower (and vis a vis the latter, one imagines that though it requires a “growth period” that growth period is actually negligible since this EP can be listened to three times in an hour, and for those of you keeping score at home, four times during the period in which David Comes to Life for instance might be listened to).
On the surface, there seem to be quite a few holes in Giant Peach’s bulwark- pretty derivative of standard 90s indie rock, decent though not earth shattering lyrics, not enough “summery hooks,” and so on. But, on the third of fourth time around, all of that falls away and it becomes all about the panache. That’s right, Giant Peach might just sound like 90s throwback, but it’s 90s throwback with style and with confidence. I imagine a discussion in which the members of Giant Peach were finalizing their lineup and someone said, “Maybe we should get a bass player.” They probably thought about it for a few minutes until they decided, “Screw it, we don’t need a bass player, we sound full as hell as it is.”
It’d be pretty easy to draw comparisons here to almost any popular indie rock band with prominent guitars from the last 20 or so years- I hear elements of Polvo, Superchunk, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, and Pavement. That said, the most important point here, I think, is Silkworm, but not for the obvious reasons. Giant Peach don’t really sound like Silkworm (or Bottomless Pit), but they’ve got the same angle on guitar rock. It’s an angle that will be unremarkable or merely serviceable to some, but that will induce foaming at the mouth in others, the ones that stick around. They’re noisy but melodic, loose but controlled.
And, like a perfect argument for the brevity of the EP format, every song here is strong. “Get Outta My Room” peaks hard when the singer wails “People don’t believe me/when I said/ I didn’t mean it in a bad way” and nosedives directly into a noisy freakout that strikes the difficult balance between hinged and unhinged. “On the Roof” pulls the old but still insanely satisfying move of clean guitar quiet intro kicked into a way overdriven verse, complete with thoroughly sick drum fills. It also introduces the male singer, who, though not as emotive as the female, finds his place perfectly in the mix. “Big Trouble” is probably the catchiest and best song on the record- it’s got the biggest guitar and vocal and hooks. In addition, it’s the only song on the record where the band feels like they’re leaning forward into the song, instead of laying back. The closer, “Slowin’ Down” is appropriately the slowest and most meandering track on the record, and because it varies the model of mid tempo rockers set by the first two songs and sped up by the third, it fits nicely with miniature arc established within the EP.
Seriously, Giant Peach are the type of band that I frankly wouldn’t blame anyone for hearing once and thinking they had heard all this before. I wouldn’t blame them, but I would pity them. Sure most of us have probably heard this before, but rarely do you hear it done so freaking well.
Lots of Things Don’t Sound Like Cabaret Voltaire
This is not one of them. This is a thing that sounds like Cabaret Voltaire. In a nice way though. I would never complain about something sounding like Cabaret Voltaire because I am of the opinion that not enough things sound like Cabaret Voltaire.
Ekoplekz: Uncanny Riddim from Jade Boyd on Vimeo.
So you all know, the best album of 2011 that includes primarily acoustic guitars is Atlas of Hearts by Richard Youngs. This record is haunting- like something you would hear echoing off the walls of an abandoned church after the world ends. The spray painted warnings on the walls might encourage wanderers to turn back, but the moments of undeniable sweetness and melody in the music you’re hearing make you wonder if maybe you aren’t the only person left and guide you down that dark hall. You are alone, obviously, what you hear down the hall is just a recording set up by some kind (or maybe profoundly cruel) soul before they perished. But Atlas of Hearts is imbued with such proof-of-life-where-none-should-be vigor that you walk to the end of darkened church hallway even though you know there might be zombies ready to rip you limb from limb.
Yes, Atlas of Hearts is the siren song for the apocalypse.
I know I shouldn’t because I’m probably the only one in the world who wants to hear (read) my thoughts on this constantly, but I’ve thought of a couple more points that will let me also rope a few more things in (thank God, amirite?).
Point 1: I find the thematic parallelism in BOM (new acronym, just made it up, tired of typing, this parenthetical is defeating that purpose, etc. etc.) to be one of the most powerful examples of simultaneous send up/celebration in popular culture that I can think of. Other examples of this, to varying degrees, include My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade (at least I think so, this one I’ve never really been sure of, but it really feels like it’s both mocking and celebrating emo and Queen), most of Stephin Merritt’s recorded output (especially 69 Love Songs which practically forces the listener to look at how ridiculous it is that pretty much every song ever written is a love song of some sort while also forcing the listener to play the album on repeat because this particular 69 are so damn well written and charming), Fucked Up’s discography (here I will take a brief aside to tie things in to music that is happening right now. To start: I don’t really like David Comes to Life. It is fine and has some killer singles, but as a whole album I don’t think it works, mostly because it is much too long and over-produced for a hardcore album. But that’s the point, I know it’s supposed to be a too-long and over produced hardcore album. The point here is that I don’t think Fucked Up are particularly successful. Just how I feel. Fwiw I didn’t really like their other two full lengths either, but the various singles I’ve heard have been consistently high quality). So, BOM is great because it sets in parallel mocking and celebrating religion with basically mocking and celebrating musical theater with it’s really pretty standard musical theater soundtrack (standard style, though way way way above standard quality of course).
Point 2: I think BOM and Annie Hall are both dealing with the fact that we “need the eggs” because they are what essentially provide us with hope in life.
Point 3: The BOM is important because it manages to give the viewer satisfaction at an apparent resolution while keeping the real crux of the show as a gaping hole. The fact that it is neither totally open ended nor far too pat is admirable.
To clarify this point: Pascal’s Wager w/r/t choosing to have “faith.” Link to the wikipedia page on the thing.
So. In my mind, if you’re using a logical proposition to prove the existence of God then you’re doing it wrong. Which is troubling because to me it feels like the only sustainable way to approach life is through the use of as much logic as you can muster (right?). These are in stark conflict with one another. In order to achieve faith you’ve got to put aside your rational mind. But in order to get to the point where faith seems like the reasonable option you’ve got to… reason? This goes back to what I hastily pumped out last night, Elder Price is bridging that gap in “I Believe.” He is willing himself to navigate the ontological gorge (Jesus Christ, I will be using the phrase “ontological gorge” again in the future. It’s just too ridiculous not to) between faith and reason. I think that is so profound in my mind because I’m both jealous of and embarrassed for him.
However, the ability to be that un-self-conscious comes with problem of making him completely un-self-aware as well. Total faithful abandon sort of requires the snuffing out of a person’s capacity for meta-cognition which is equally as troubling as living without hope. This is what I see as the unresolved issue in BOM (unresolved in a good way though). Elder Price and the Ugandans arrive at a point at which they can exist without a great deal of meta-cognition w/r/t their various plights because of the mitigating salve of religion. But, in a bit of dramatic irony, Stone and Parker seem to be winking at the audience (as they so often are) in songs like “I Believe” since we, as the more objective parties, can understand that the belief that God changed his mind about black people in 1978 is patently absurd.
The Book of Mormon is the best thing. As you can see, it’s got me ranting like an idiot.
At the outset I must confess that I am not a “musical theater person.” I sincerely wish I was, but I simply am not (yet at least. I’m going to try to broaden my horizons). My collection of musicals can be counted on two hands, and is primarily limited to things I have heard about on NPR and Stephen Sondheim classics.
Confessions aside: I cannot stop listening to “The Book of Mormon” soundtrack. I don’t have any sort of aversion to musical theater so it’s no big coup that I find it tolerable. But tolerable does not describe how I find The Book of Mormon. I have listened to almost nothing but this soundtrack for weeks. I cannot stop listening to it. And more importantly, there are choice moments where I still get chills (aside from this it’s basically Bruce Springsteen, a few Morbid Angel tracks, and the Mountain Goats that can do that to me consistently). I was flapping my arms around like an idiot during the Tony’s performance. LIKE AN IDIOT. WHAT DOES FLAPPING ONE’S ARMS EVEN HAVE TO DO WITH ENJOYING A PIECE OF MUSIC. I DO NOT KNOW.
Until just a few days ago, I couldn’t really figure out why. Now, however, I’ve sorted it out. As an introduction I need to present this clip from Annie Hall:
Focus on the “I need the eggs” bit and the pieces start to fall in place pretty easily. The crux of Annie Hall and of “The Book or Mormon,” in my mind, is essentially the same and two-fold, though they deal with different surface material (religion and love). Point one is that human relationships and religion (respectively) are insane and on the surface have no discernible objective value (those eggs/golden plates are fake!). At least not until they are approached (until you approach them) from the right direction. The second half is that we desperately need these things. Check out the “everybody worships” part of David Foster Wallace’s “This Is Water” for another variation on this truism. That he concludes that the only choice we get is what to worship is vital, if complicating. It’s also something I’m going to deal with shortly.
First though, a side note: the assumption among religious types (and, full disclosure, I kind of consider myself a “religious type” in a complicated and embattled way) and hopeless romantics is that religion and love are prescriptive phenomena. They are reality, they create it, they manage it, etc. Religion (and from here on out I’m going to hope you’ll forgive me for not typing “religion and love” every time since it’s a bit tiresome. With minimal variation, I am convinced that what I am saying about religion can also be accurately said about love, as well as various other things) to some is that set of beliefs from which reality springs. God created the universe. God set the clock in motion. So on and so forth. And I think this is an important fundamental element of any sort of real belief. You have to believe at some point that your religion was the first cause in this universe. That it’s not the thing doing the reacting, but the thing that is being reacted to. Joseph Smith did not make up the golden plates, God really put them there.
I think though, the conclusion that “The Book of Mormon” arrives at rather explicitly (and that Annie Hall arrives at implicitly) is that religion is actually descriptive. That is, it is created by people after the fact to negotiate, for instance, AIDS, baby raping, genital mutilation, and anything else in this world (see “Making Things Up Again” and “Joseph Smith American Moses”).
And this is where Wallace’s notion of choosing comes in. We have to choose not only what to believe, but also to believe that what we believe is a prescriptive actor within the universe. This is why I get chills when Andrew Rannells proclaims that he believes the increasingly ridiculous tenets of Mormonism in “I Believe.” (Please, I beg of you, watch him on the Tony’s if you haven’t already). By sheer force of will he is switching from a descriptive to a prescriptive angle. That is tough. The act of creating faith is probably one of the single most difficult mental feats people can undertake. Because as I understand it, faith is belief without “proof.” It’s unscientific and deeply troubling to a lot of people. The man in Woody Allen’s joke is already there — even though his psychiatrist encourages him to turn in his brother, he doesn’t because he is getting substantive results from his beliefs. Elder Price gets there when he trusts in Heavenly Father to protect him from the “warlord who shoots people in the face.” In order to get on the level of the man in the joke and Elder Price, one must not only choose to believe but also completely discard not doubt, but the fact that anything other than the truth he’s chosen can even begin to exist or could have ever existed at all.
So so so, and to sum up what was really supposed to be like 200 words, “The Book of Mormon” taps something fundamental in the way that humans live their lives — which, to put it bluntly and incompletely, is the constant pull between faith and cynicism. That’s at least a real part of why it’s amazing. It is, of course, hilarious and catchy as well which really really helps.
WHY IS NO ONE SAYING WHAT IS OBVIOUS?????
Ok, look. Titus Andronicus are a really great band. We’ve established that. The Monitor is tight as hell, and The Airing of Grievances is similarly (if not equally) tight as hell. And they’re a great live band.
But this has been gnawing at me all day.
Why is no one saying that their cover of “Birdhouse In Your Soul” on the Onion AV Club site is bad? It’s horrible. Ok, that Bukowski intro is pretty cool, but the actually song itself is bad cover band material. Like, and I’m going to level with you here, it sounds like something Michael and I would jam on after having a few beers on a Friday night when there was nothing to do aside from randomly cover songs that we like, provided that we did things like that (which, I mean, we do sometimes, but usually with much simpler songs than “Birdhouse” e.g. “Where Eagles Dare.” [Not the Iron Maiden one, the Misfits one, oh how I long for them to cover each other] [Important sub-point, I concede that "Birdhouse In Your Soul" is not the easiest song to just pick up and cover. But Titus Andronicus, being the generally great band that they are, should know better]). The difference is that we would be fully aware that no one else wanted to hear it. Or we would, you know, use our awesome rock powers to make it much better than it was the first time we ran through it (“awesome rock powers”).
I’ve been throwing around some big music industry conspiracy theories for the past ten minutes or so: “does the band or their label have some deal with with Pitchfork/Stereogum/the whole interent?” I wonder. They must b/c this thing is no good. It sounds lazy. It sounds tired. It is not tight (and I don’t mean “tight” in the “cool” sense, I mean it in the “musically together” sense) at all. It has none of the energy that we all know and love from Titus Andronicus- for Christ’s sake, Stickles never gets above an almost gentle-by-comparison-coo, not to mention the fact that he is ridiculously out of tune. And the keyboard. It sticks out like a sore and also probably infected thumb. No one wants that.
But that Bukowski sample is pretty cool.
And I will allow some of it might have to do with the AV club being used to cute folky versions of things and not being prepared to properly mix the rock monstrosity that is Titus Andronicus.
But, still, don’t listen to it.
Okay, listen to it if you want/haven’t already b/c you got excited when you saw that one of your favorite current bands was covering one of your favorite songs from your second (or third depending upon the day of the week) favorite album from another one of your favorite current bands (maybe that was just me).
Music criticism, man!!
But seriously, I love Titus Andronicus. If you haven’t listened to them yet:
1. Shame on you.
2. Do it now.
OMG Nicolas Jaar
You read that right, Nichoals Jaar has got me exclaiming to extant deities up in here with his fabulous full length Space Is Only Noise. It appeals to me particularly because although it is very certainly an electronic record, it’s got the pacing of a pop and or rock record i.e. it ebbs and flows instead of building steadily intensifying layers or sound or establishing grooves like most electronic music. Nothing against the establishing of grooves or the intensifying of layers, I’m just saying that (to paraphrase a friend of mine with whom I was talking about this sort of tangentially last night) if forced to choose I’d pick electric guitars over drum machines and strained throaty vocals over the cut up ones which is to say, I tend to like the pacing and tropes of rock music more than the pacing and tropes of electronic music. As is evident from my dubstep post, this has been changing ever so slightly lately, but I still love the gut level punch of Neil Young’s guitar more than most things including but not limited to, “connecting” with other people, chocolate, and campy science fiction (this last one, if you know me, is especially revealing of the power of my love for Neil Young’s guitar). Nicholas Jaar is an excellent transitional record for me because it sort of/kind of has the best of both worlds.
Also, it’s not the type of electronic music that insists on me dancing to it, which I totally dig because I hate dancing more than I hate most things.
And, to pull my head out of my own personal hang ups for just few sentences, this record is fantastic from an entirely objective standpoint as well. The main thing it’s going for it is the sparseness. A lot of “weird” electronic music tries to fill in every sonic hole with as many bleeps/bloops/screeches and etc. as computerly possible, not so with Jaar. The space let’s you contemplate how truly strange that little interlude where the conversation snuck in was, and how creepy in a defamiliarization of pop sort of way that quasi single “Space Is Only Noise If You Can See” was. And, Lord Almighty (again with the deities, he says) the use of piano on this album is magnificent. Again w/r/t this album as liminal between pop and IDM, the piano (and even occasional acoustic guitar) grounds the record in the “real” so it doesn’t completely fly off in to incomprehensible outer space. It’s a foothold for the listener. It’s the perfectly apt sonic underpinning that coheres the record and makes it just approachable enough. It reminds me of that episode of Farscape (after research, “That Old Black Magic” from season 1) where John Crichton is wooed by pitch man presenting him with facts he shouldn’t be able to know about his (Crichton’s) life, and then, once he submits to the pitch, he’s suddenly and mystically transported somewhere else entirely from which he can’t escape. The piano is that pitch man.
Taylor
Michael
