Heccubus.Blog

Well, we made it. We’re halfway through 2009. This has been a strange year for me, and I think my all-over-the-place listening habits may reflect that. As I have in previous years, however, it is time to run down my favourite releases of 2009 so far. It’s been a pretty slow year so far for me (as noted by the fact that I managed to take time to reacquaint myself with a slew of classic punk records in the midst of keeping on top of new stuff) but there’s still a pretty nice selection of ace-quality music that came out in the first half of the year (in absolutely no particular order):

Sunn O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions
Drone metal overlords Sunn O))) return after their last proper full length (2005’s terrifyingly dark Black One) with another set of dense, punishing, fog-shrouded soundtracks to your worst nightmares. The twist on this outing, and what makes it so remarkable, is the group’s decision to incorporate a broader range of musical styles, drifting from their own trademark sounds into hazy, spiraling psychedelia at the drop of a hat toward the album’s monumental finale. Where Black One was a harrowing listening experience that sounded as though it had been recorded in the deepest depths of Hell, Monoliths shows them progressing through new territory, exploring new sounds, and vastly expanding their oeuvre to include more of their various influences. Without much hesitation, I’d call this my favourite album of the year so far, hands down.

The Horrors – Primary Colours
Hands up anyone who saw this coming. Anyone? No? Seriously, who in their right minds expected the gothy Tim Burton extras in garage punk band the Horrors to wind up releasing a lush, shoegaze-influenced album as the follow-up to their middling, gimmicky debut? Primary Colours could have been released under a completely different band name, and I likely would have never noticed. This is a great example of a totally changed band. Gone are the squealing Hammond organs and punk snarl, replaced by dense layers of reverbed guitar and…well the vocals didn’t change too much, I suppose. Still, though, this shows a band that desperately needed to grow up doing so well before I think anyone expected them to.

Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phoenix haven’t had a whole lot of trouble winning me over in the past. Their music is just typically fun, upbeat, indie pop with roots held firmly in the radio-friendly music of the 70s and 80s. Not a whole lot of problems in that mix. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix continues this trend, more or less, without veering off into any territory that could detract from their syrupy-sweet sound. If you’re looking for a ridiculously catchy, fun-filled indie pop album, then look no further. It’s not likely to get much better than this one for the year. It would be nice to be proven wrong on that, but it doesn’t seem terribly likely in all honesty.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart
Now I will be the first to tell you that the whole “shoegaze revival” thing is starting to get a little bit ridiculous. That said, however, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart’s self-titled LP is one of those albums that just kind of gets the whole thing right. A mix of shoegaze’s ethereal, reverb-soaked sound and the lo-fi abrasiveness of more obscure gazers like Black Tambourine (whom I just discovered this year, thanks to similar comparisons made on other websites), The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart may have the hype machine fueling their rise to indie pop stardom, but when the music’s this good, it’s hard to begrudge them that limelight.

Wavves – Wavvves
This album is so sunny and fun that it makes me want to dance around my room like an idiot. Very few albums do that to me. Wavves is the (formerly, as he now tours with a regular drummer) one-man project of Nathan Williams, who cranks out the fun on his second full-length like there’s no tomorrow. The sound is something like what might happen if current lo-fi “it” bands like Times New Viking took on the sun-soaked, beach-loving pop of the Beach Boys and channeled it through mid-80s So-Cal punk rock. Put simply: it’s incredibly stupid fun.

Wolves In The Throne Room – Black Cascade
From sunny pop/punk psychedelia to murky, intense American black metal. Like I said, it’s been a weird year for me. Wolves In The Throne Room had established themselves as a force to be reckoned with in the USBM scene when they released 2007’s Two Hunters, and on their latest LP, they cement their status as one of the big players in American black metal, all the while continuing to expand their sound beyond black metal’s relatively strict confines. The music is atmospheric, densely layered, and shrouded in a thick fog that makes all the elements of each track sound as though they’re fighting and clawing to be heard. This one is definitely worthy of making an appearance on anyone’s year-end “Best Metal Releases” list.

Kylesa – Static Tensions
Kylesa’s dual-drummer attack is one of few that I’ve ever heard recorded the way it should be. With each drummer taking up their own stereo channel, much of Static Tensions feels like a percussive assault that just doesn’t let up over the course of its playtime. Couple that with the band’s shared vocal duties and crushing riffs, and each track on the album feels fresh and unique. Not once have I ever felt bored by this album. Without a doubt, Static Tensions deserves a great deal more attention than I’ve noticed it getting. It’s relentless, monolithic sludge metal that deserves to be recognized as one of the year’s strongest, most consistently enjoyable releases.

Sonic Youth – The Eternal
What’s with all the mediocre reviews being handed to this album? I mean, what are people actually expecting from Sonic Youth so late in their game? This is their sixteenth studio album, not counting all those left-field experimental SYR releases. Considering the members are at an age now that makes their band name almost hilarious, and have been doing this for so long that they’ve seen bands they directly influenced form, break up, and then reunite, can we not see The Eternal for its own staggering merits? As far as I’m concerned this record marks the first time they have successfully married their later-years mellowness with the rabid noise rock of their early career, and their earlier Geffen material. It is taking the three major pieces of the Sonic Youth puzzle, and putting them together to create their strongest release since Murray Street. So where’s the problem? Don’t believe the press until you’ve heard the album for yourself.

Japandroids – Post-Nothing
Two piece band from Canada? If you’re like me, your first thought was “Uh oh, the kids who really liked Death From Above 1979 are getting signed now” and promptly dismissed them. Of course, that would mean also that, like me, you’re incredibly dumb. I was forced to swallow my words the first time I put on Post-Nothing. True, there are moments here that I sometimes feel they may be channeling DFA79 just a little bit (mostly in the vocal delivery), but this is a totally different band in just about every way. Japandroids seem more concerned with making music that’s just plain fun about things that are also just plain fun (drinking, partying, girls), and it works. Like they say in “Young Hearts Spark Fire”: “I don’t wanna worry about dying / I just wanna worry about sunshine and girls”. I think we can all relate to that.

Dinosaur Jr. – Farm
Who knew the Dinosaur Jr. reunion would turn out this well? I assumed, like many others, that 2007’s reunion album Beyond was a fluke. It was a pretty alright album, and one of few reunion albums that actually worked out well. I just sort of figured that if they even made it to another album after that, it would be as terrible as the half-hearted trash that Mascis was turning out under the Dinosaur Jr name toward the end of its initial run. Imagine my surprise when Farm turned out to be one of 2009’s best rock albums. And “rock” is definitely the right word for this. The face-melting J. Mascis guitar solos are in full effect here, and it all just takes me back to the first time I heard the band. I was about 9 years old, poking around a cousin’s CD collection and found the “Just Like Heaven” EP tucked away in some old hardcore albums. I knew (and loved) the Cure track already, so I was pretty excited to hear this new version. I was (and still am whenever I put it on) completely blown away. It remains one of my favourite cover songs of all time. Hearing Farm for the first time took me back to that moment, and I felt like I was discovering an old favourite all over again. Welcome back, guys.

Future Of The Left – Travels With Myself And Another
I never really took the time to familiarize myself with McLusky. I’m working on that now, though, having heard this album just yesterday and falling completely in love with it. It seems to veer wildly between straight-ahead anthemic hardcore and Scratch Acid-style art punk, but winds up just sounding like an insane, driving rock album. If you want something to drive down the street shaking your fist and smoking a pack of cigarettes to on your way to a seedy basement bar to start a fight, then this might be the album for you.

Shogun Kunitoki – Vinonaamakasio
Shogun Kunitoki’s 2006 album Tasankokaiku was one of those really strange accidental discoveries for me that I ended up being insanely happy to have made. It’s sad that I am the only one I know who really took to their droning, hypnotic electronic sounds, because that album’s follow-up Vinonaamakasio is a vast improvement. It’s a bit more melodic, and a bit of a “rock” affair at times, while continuing down their winding ambient paths at other times. Get on top of this one, because I can guarantee that it will go down as one of 2009’s most under-appreciated albums otherwise.

In addition to losing pop’s greatest icon today, we also lost the great Sky Saxon, of legendary LA garage rock band The Seeds. I really don’t know what to say about Mr. Saxon, so I won’t try to eulogize the way I did with MJ earlier. Just do yourself a favour and watch these Seeds videos:

RIP, Mr. Saxon.

The world lost a legend today. And I mean “legend” in the absolute truest possible sense. Michael Jackson transcended pop stardom; he was, in and of himself, a phenomenon. The man could ignite the entertainment world with his slightest action. It’s unfortunate, with that in mind, that so much of the final fifteen years of his life was spent in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Controversy and mayhem seemed to follow him closely right up until his final days. For all the pedophilia jokes and “Wacko Jacko” cracks, people seemed to forget just how incredible M.J. was as a performer.
Elvis Presley is remembered as the thin, leather-clad, hip-swiveling rocker that he debuted as in the 50s rather than the fat, drug-addled wreck that he was when he died. Let’s do the same for Michael. He was more than the media let him become these past years. He was a tremendous vocal talent, and an overall remarkable presence onstage. Let his parenting and plastic surgery go the way of Elvis’ sequined suits and obesity. Remember Michael as Michael Jackson, the fresh-faced kid in the Jackson 5 with ridiculous pipes. Remember Michael as Michael Jackson, the sweet, soft-spoken teen superstar that danced his way down a light up sidewalk. Just remember him for what he really was:

Like most people who download music and enjoy hip hop, I picked up an early leak of Eminem’s “return” album Relapse a couple of weeks ago. Unlike most of these people, however, I was genuinely excited to hear it. I mean, Christ, I actually liked Encore. Sure if you hold it up against Em’s first two albums, it’s absolute garbage, but at its core there was a solid, enjoyable–if a tad imbalanced–record there. It was his usual mix of witty barbs, comic tomfoolery, and searing hatred for all of mankind. Yup, it was, indeed, an Eminem record. And at the time, that hadn’t quite gotten old yet. However, since the release of the underrated Encore, five years have passed. Five years of silence from the Mathers camp, outside of his usual headline-grabbing outrageousness. Five years without a mildly amusing joke track that gets overplayed to the point of being infuriatingly unfunny; five years without an angry, bitter hate track about Kim, his mother, or both; five years without a touching ode to his daughter. For five full years, we heard nary a peep out of the man, aside from popping by occasionally to rain down upon us a shower of news about his glorious return, to be entitled Relapse. In the meatime, all we had from Mathers was a bunch of shitty, boring production for other artists, and a lot of empty promises.
So a year or so passes with the usual shit that we’ve all come to expect from the hip hop industry when it comes to announcing one’s comeback. We were fed delays, excuses, and long lapses of silence for a while, and eventually everyone just sort of stopped caring. And can you blame them? The rumour mill started churning with news of a new Eminem album as far back as fall 2007, thanks to a Cashis-fueled assertion that a new album entitled King Mathers would be out by year’s end. Thank fucking God that it never happened. As Mathers continued to isolate himself from the world, consumed by the death of his close friend Proof and an addiction to prescription drugs (not to mention marrying and divorcing Kim….again), the idea of another Eminem album became a bit of a stretch. Hell, I half figured he’d wind up dead. But no, after all these years of (maybe, I guess) waiting, we’ve finally been graced with the presence of Eminem’s return, the bloated mess of shitty beats and “been there done that” rhymes that is Relapse.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not exactly what you’d call an expert on hip hop, be it music-wise or culture-wise. What I can say for sure, however, is that I am well aware of the fact that my opinion of this album may not be a popular one. Additionally, I also know that it could very well be a popular opinion. At this stage, it is becoming apparent that Relapse may be the most divisively reviewed album of the year. Frankly, on my first listen, I made it through about 4 or 5 tracks before I just had to shut it off, and hope that my ears would forget what had just been forcibly crammed into them. I suppose I should have seen this coming, but Relapse is just more of the same old shit from Mathers. We get the goofy, “funny” track that will no doubt be played so much on the radio that it just gets driven into the ground. We get all the angry, bitter, “I hate you mom/Kim” tracks. And we get the heartfelt ode to his daughter, I’m sure, though I was not able to stomach enough of the album to get that far into it. Those tracks usually come in a bit later, mind you. It all just sort of leads me to ask “why?” Why would anyone, particularly someone who is as cynical about mainstream music as myself, expect something new from a man who has made millions off of releasing the same album five times now? Why would he bother to mess with what is basically a winning formula? Why would anyone actually subject themselves to listening to this?
Okay that last one isn’t all that fair, in reality. I’ve been finding myself quite surprised to find that the album is receiving some very positive reviews. Allmusic.com even went so far as to give it 4/5 stars. It has also inspired some fairly strong responses to my own opinions of it, which I suppose I find even more surprising. A user on RateYourMusic.com, a record cataloging website that I use felt the need to respond to me directly via a private message. The exchange, I felt, was quite amusing. Here, in full, is my initial review of the album that caused this poor lad so much grief:

I know I know you’re probably all tired of hearing about my mom” he says. Yeah. We fucking are. I made it four songs into this pathetic mess, and can tell you now that I am never putting this album on again.

Okay, it seems pretty…bitter? I’m not sure, but regardless, it is important to note that for a brief, negative record review from me, this is comparatively tame. However, it inspired one of the album’s admirers so that he felt it necessary to try and…I don’t know I guess he was trying to call my bluff or something:

Do you often review albums after listening to less than a handful of songs?

I’ll make sure to ignore all your reviews in the future.

Now, not only is it wise to note that his account has been deleted by an administrator since sending this (I won’t even bother posting my admittedly incredibly dick-ish reply), but also that this album, this flaming pinnacle of mediocrity–which if I recall, he awarded a 4.5/5 rating–inspired such rage in an individual in response to my negative opinion of it, that he felt the need to confront me directly and “threaten” to never read any of my reviews again. Oh horror of horrors, right? The point is though, Eminem is turning into a career failure in my eyes. He hit high so early with his first two records, and the quality of his music has been steadily declining since then. And in despite of all of this, the man still seems to have some kind of lasting appeal, something that I don’t think anyone expected when he burst onto the scene with “My Name Is” in 1999. For someone who seemed so destined for One Hit Wonder status, it’s shocking to think that he is now a multi-platinum selling artist who has been in the mainstream eye for a decade. And why?
Examining Em’s output is like examining a terminal cancer patient’s health. It’s just a steady, remarkably steep downward slope. [Okay, ouch. Sorry, cancer people. --Heccubus] There’s so little hope at this point that it will ever go back up that we might as well just give up on him and let him drift away in peace. [Okay, last cancer joke, I swear. --Heccubus] The quality of his work has dropped off quicker than any other major “what the fuck happened?” artists that immediately spring to mind in my head. Even bands like Black Sabbath, The Misfits or Iron Maiden, bands whose sudden drop in musical quality are almost legendary, enjoyed success over years and years before declining into middling, sub-par material. Em’s slope began almost immediately after his career high, The Marshall Mathers LP. It could probably be argued that he has a lot more mainstream appeal than other rappers because, well…at the risk of being taken the wrong way, he’s white. That doesn’t by any means mean that he’s better for it (he’s not), but it definitely helps the industry sell him. On top of his suburb-friendly exterior, let’s face it, it ain’t hard to market an angry white rapper to a bunch of angry white teenagers. Even though Mathers has been spewing the same ludicrous hyperbole since day one, teenagers still eat it up. “Whoa, you hate your mom? I totally hate my mom too!” It’s easy to see his lasting influence when you consider something that simple.
I digress, however. My problem with Eminem now is with his inability to come up with something new to say. Do we need more songs about how much he hates Kim? No, of course we don’t. Remarrying her was a fucking stupid idea, and as a direct result of this stupid fucking idea, we are now likely going to be treated to another three or four albums of him bitching about how much he hates her. Do we need more songs about how much he hates his mother? Absolutely not. We get it, Marshall. You had a shitty childhood. So did lots of other people. They, however, are not quite so lucky to have made millions of dollars complaining about it for five multi-platinum albums. More songs about your daughter? Ah why not? Most of them are pretty cute, and some go so far as to be touching at times, despite the insane bent that they often dwell on. The “funny” songs? Oh dear God no. I think Eminem’s humour became stale about 8 years ago after we all got fed up with “The Real Slim Shady”. It will never cease to amaze me that he consistently releases the exact same “funny” song as the first single from every album, followed by a string of serious, supposedly hard-hitting singles. And while it’s true that tracks like “The Way I Am” have an impact on the listener (assuming they enjoy his music, I mean) the impact tends to wear off when the message is drilled home repeatedly for a decade.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just a bitter, jaded cynic. Maybe none of what I’ve rambled on about here even makes any sense. Hell, the topic has shifted so many times here that I’m not even willing to scroll back and edit this mess. Regardless of everything I’ve said here, yeah I still like Eminem. I’ll still be anticipating Relapse 2 if it’s actually going to happen. The problem, though, is that much like the last 3 releases, I’ll probably wind up being let down again, and then sitting on the Internet bitching about it to whoever will listen.

Bauhaus – Volume One: 1979 – 1983
This is actually almost entirely because I bought a Bauhaus T-shirt and suddenly felt the need to listen to “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” afterward. Additionally, it seems to mostly be the first half of this disc that I enjoy the most, save for their dreadful cover of T. Rex’s “Telegram Sam”. “Double Dare”, “In The Flat Field”, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, “Stigmata Martyr”… The first half just rages up until that T. Rex cover with so much brooding attitude that it’s a wonder anyone can listen to it without feeling like going out and picking a fight with a vampire.
What’s more, here, is that I’ve always considered myself to only be a casual Bauhaus fan. I just had the two Volume compilations for years and assumed that was more than enough to keep me satisfied. It wasn’t until the past year or so that I really began to delve into their music and explore it more thoroughly. Still, however, whenever I have a craving for Peter Murphy and co., Volume One is the disc that I turn to most often.

Joy Division – Permanent: Joy Division 1995
Another compilation. In this case, probably the most underrated of all the Joy Division compilations I’ve heard. Permanent tends to get pushed aside in favour of Substance a lot, which I’ve always disagreed with. Substance showcases the rougher, more punk-influenced Joy Division with dashes of their startling pop sensibilities added to sweeten the load for inexperienced listeners. Permanent, on the other hand, gathers what could arguably be the band’s most accessible material onto a single disc, though with a pointless and unnecessary remix of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” tacked onto the end. This album has everything I could possibly want, short of making my own Joy Division mixed tapes; “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, “Transmission”, “She’s Lost Control”, “Shadowplay”, “Dead Souls”, “Atmosphere”, and pretty much every Joy Division track that I’d count among my favourites. I have always recommended this as an ideal starting place for people who are curious about Joy Division, and will continue to do so. Much like Bauhaus’ Volume One, this one seems to be the disc I turn to most often when I feel like listening to this band.

Hot Water Music – Caution
I can’t explain why, but this is by far and away my most favourite Hot Water Music album. Lately I’ve been turning to it a lot specifically for “Remedy”, “I Was On A Mountain” and “Trusty Chords”. For some reason those first three tracks on the album just hit me more than anything else on it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the entire album is great–hence my reasoning in calling it my favourite Hot Water Music album, you see–but that opening trio floors me every time. They’re the perfect mix of everything I love about HWM: aggression, melody, and Chuck Ragan’s poetic, damaged vocals. A great album by a great band (who is also a great loss to the punk rock community; a trio of greatness).

At The Drive-In – Relationship Of Command
I seem to be in a nostalgic mood as of late, revisiting things like At The Drive-In’s simultaneous breakthrough and swansong. This album came out when I was in high school and changed my fucking life (expect a “Records That Changed My Life” feature on it at some point when I have the time). The manic energy and power here is nearly untouchable, and imagining the live clips I’ve watched of them just makes me wish that much more that I’d had a chance to see them live. What gets me about this record, though, is the way no one can ever seem to agree on what the best track on it is. Everyone always seems to have a different opinion. Personally, my vote goes to “Enfilade” and it’s plodding drum-machine verses and insanely powerful, driving choruses. This could stand among my favourite songs from that period of my life, and perhaps of all time. The whole record is equally as good, but that song in particular has always stood out to me.

Death From Above 1979 – You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine
Continuing with the nostalgia a bit here, sort of. This album is only a few years old, but I still listen to it when I feel like revisiting a different place and time in my mind. Whenever I hear this album, it’s 2004, I live in Hamilton, Ontario, and life is actually pretty okay for a change. With the exception of “Black History Month” (don’t ask, I just really dislike that song and don’t think it belongs on this album) this album has always been near-perfect to me. It’s pummeling sound just drives your head straight into the ground and then stomps all over it. It’s pretty widely-known at this point that they said their sound was the result of wanting to sound like a herd of elephants stampeding through your living room, and I still say there couldn’t be a more accurate description of what listening to this album is like. It’s like a break-up album for noise-rock kids.

You know, the world is kind of a funny place. That’s clicheed as fuck, but it’s true. Anyone who knows me is well aware of the fact that I tend to lean a bit on the misanthropic side of things. I mean, I’ll just flat out say it: I fucking hate people. I hate everything about them. The only time I tend to enjoy the company of another person is when I am so fabulously intoxicated that everything around me starts to become really… Neat. That level of inebriation where everything you see, smell and hear is suddenly a very, very good thing.
Now of course, this is rare for me because I am a cantankerous, bitter bastard about 95% of the time as of late, but it does happen occasionally nonetheless. Outside of this tiny fraction of my waking life, however, I am generally not the most enjoyable person to be around.
So how does this play into my horrendously typical opening line? Well, yesterday, I popped open my Twitter feed to find a post from Owen Pallett (a.k.a. Final Fantasy). In this post he stated:

OK, this Micachu record is the best thing on earth. I am going to buy ten copies tomorrow. Do you want one? (What’s your address again?)

Now this was clearly a ruse. Being the clever bastard that I am, however, I quickly responded with the not-at-all-trying-to-grab-the-attention-of-a-musician-that-I-admire response of:

I do! I’ve been pretty curious about it. Keep hearing great things.

Aha! Surely now I would find a way to engage somebody that I admire as an artist in a brief conversation about music in the year 2009! “What other new albums are you enjoying, Owen?” I’d say, and then he’d marvel at my vast knowledge of what’s out, what’s coming out, and what’s already leaked that I’ve had the pleasures of getting my grubby little mitts on. Of course, no response came. I mean that’s normal, it’s fucking Twitter and these people get mountains of direct contact from fans every day. I shudder to think of what these people’s @ Reply tabs in their Twitter clients must look like. If I myself get more than 4 in a day, I practically fucking wet myself.
So I stayed up all night reading The Walking Dead, passed out for two hours, and then awoke around 9:00 AM. After contacting the person I was waking up early for to find out what was up with our breakfast plans (they were canceled because–surprise sur-fucking-prise–she overslept) I was pretty sure that my day was likely to result in one of two things:

1. I would end up lying on the railroad tracks waiting for the eternal sleep.
2. I would end up tying everyone else to the railroad tracks and getting maddeningly drunk.

It was about 10 minutes later, however, that my day took a rather lovely turn for the better. In the midst of spending the past three months feeling as though my life were in shambles, someone turned around and did something very nice for me for no particular reason. I opened my Twitter feed this morning to find that Mr. Pallett had personally offered to forward me a copy of that new Micachu album in whichever format I preferred. You know, even if it doesn’t happen (he forgets to check his email, doesn’t send it because I just realized 45 minutes after the fact that I forgot to specify the format I preferred, you know…whatever) I don’t think I’d be disappointed too much. The fact that someone I’ve never met just sort of threw me a favour and offered to do something nice just for the sake of doing it…
My day suddenly seems a lot brighter.

Now fuck off, I’m going back to sleep.

Since devices such as the iPhone and iPod Touch (which is what I’m writing this on, coincidentally) are getting so outrageously popular, I’ve taken it upon myself to set up a mobile version of the site that is better-optimized for viewing in such gadgets. To see it, simply direct your mobile device to heccubus.com. Instead of the usual index page, you’ll be greeted with list of the ten most recent updates. You will also, of course have the option to view the site as it would normally appear if you do please.
Anyway, that’s all for now. I’m extremely sick so I can’t say that I feel much like writing a full-fledged update as of yet.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? There’s a very good explanation for my extended absence from the world of writing (some of you spry types might notice that I have not contributed any material to Mondo Magazine since 2008 either), but considering its somewhat personal nature, I’ll dumb it down to a few basic points:

• My fiancee left me, and I have been cripplingly depressed as a result.
• My family is in the midst of some pretty lousy shit right now, and that as contributed to the aforementioned depression.
• I became utterly obsessed with the television show “Dead Like Me” and it has left me teetering between “Why would God do that?” style depression, and fits of hysterical laughter.
• I saw “Watchmen.” Twice.
• I drank. A lot.

So that’s sort of the gist of it. I don’t mean to come across as overly self-absorbed or self-pitying, but suffice to say the world has kind of dealt me a hell of a blow in the past couple of months, and I needed some time to recover and get my head back on straight. Or rather, as straight as it could possibly revert itself to.
ANYWAY.
I have a few things I wanted to address here today, on this lovely overcast Wednesday morning. Firstly, is it just me, or has 2009 been a really lacklustre year for music so far? And before anyone starts hopping up and down, let me say that no, I was not that impressed with Merriweather Post Pavilion. It’s okay, but seriously, a fucking album comes out at the dawn of the new year and everyone’s already got ten foot erections and calling it the “album of the year.” The best album I’ve heard so far has been The Hazards of Love by the Decemberists, and on repeat listens, it’s already begun to lose some of its initial appeal. Something tells me my year-end top 50 is going to be excruciatingly hard to put together, as I’ve yet to hear anything that I’d even consider for the list, never mind definitely put on it. It’s somewhat saddening to think of when you consider that by this time last year I was so up-to-my-neck in awesome albums that I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Secondly, anyone here should be aware of the fact that I use Twitter quite often. I mean, if you direct your eyes to the right ever so slightly, you can see my Twitter feed right there, so you’d have to be particularly inattentive to miss it. What is not immediately obvious, however, is that I’ve also launched a bit of an experimental Twitter account. Essentially, I start playing an album, switch TwitterFox over to this account, and post reviews of the album track-by-track. So far, I’ve done the Decemberists’ The Hazards of Love and Swan Lake’s Enemy Mine. It’s been pretty fun, and I’m told by others that it’s pretty entertaining to read, so if you’re on Twitter, follow TweetRecordReviews and tune in for new reviews every so often.
Now, then, the reason I initially sat down to start writing: the first in another of what I plan to have become a reasonably regular feature (and yes, I know I haven’t done a “Records That Changed My Life” spot in a while, I am working on a new one). This is called “Lately Listening” and mostly just provides me with a means to list off some of the stuff that I’ve been listening to as of late for the sake of friendly recommendation, or just spouting off opinions on what I feel to be worthwhile albums. So let’s start:

Ceremony – Disappear
I can understand why some people wouldn’t enjoy this. It veers back and forth between walls-of-sound shoegaze and post-New Order electro pop pretty often, and all throughout the vocals pepper the mix with some admittedly awful lyrics. That said, however, if you enjoy the modern wave of My Bloody Valentine worshipers armed with pedal boards and reverb-soaked vocals, then Ceremony probably has a few things to offer you. For starters, as I said, they subscribe to shoegaze outfits like MBV or the Jesus and Mary Chain as much as they delve into the world of 80s electro pop like New Order or Depeche Mode. Given that somewhat eclectic mix, the end result is an album that can be immensely enjoyable for someone with wildly varied tastes (like myself) who can manage to ignore the somewhat trite, cliche-ridden lyrics.

A Place To Bury Strangers – A Place To Bury Strangers
A Place To Bury Strangers is another of those bands who seems to get lumped into this shoegaze revival that we’ve been going through over the past couple of years. The thing that, to me, sets them apart from most of their peers, however, is the reckless abandon that seems to permeate most of their songs. Their self-titled debut LP is loud and abrasive, but also soft and delicate. They seem to be one of the better groups in this little revivalist genre. “To Fix The Gash In Your Head”, “Don’t Think Lover”, and “I Know I’ll See You” have been some fairly standard go-to tracks for me lately, but the entire album is worth looking into.

The Gaslight Anthem – The ‘59 Sound
Anyone reading who talks to me in real life has likely heard me mention this band at least once in the past three or four months. Throughout most of January and pretty much all of February, I was utterly obsessed with this album. So much so, that I considered going back and revising my Top 50 Albums of 2008 list in order to place it at least in my top ten. I didn’t, of course, but even the thought of doing so indicates that this album grew on me considerably. Ordinarily, I would never consider doing something like that. This album, the band’s second, is a remarkable improvement over their earlier material. They’ve continued to create vintage-hued, Springsteen-lovin’ punk rock anthems while simultaneously working in some other outside influences (see: the practically-a-country-ballad weeper “Here’s Looking At You Kid”) and smoothing out the rough areas of their sound that kept their debut from being a truly great record. This one got me through some pretty tough times both last year, and this year. It’s more or less set to become a standby record for when I’m feelin’ blue.

It’s difficult for me to accurately recount the immense influence that Erick “Lux Interior” Purkhiser, vocalist for the Cramps, has had on my life. At the age of 14, I was given a copy of the Epitaph Records compilation Punk-O-Rama III. The twelfth track on that otherwise bland compilation changed my life. The Cramps’ manic, surf-rock-on-speed “Haulass Hyena” was like nothing I’d ever heard before. It was insane, put simply. Vocals were permeated by the helium-pitched laughter of what I can only imagine was the most ridiculous, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth-inspired cartoon hyena of all time. The guitars were like Dick Dale or the Ventures jamming with the Ramones. The drums were a primitive, stomping mess. There was no bass. I had no idea what to make of it, but I loved it all the same. Within a matter of weeks, I had stumbled upon their IRS Records compilation Bad Music For Bad People. The album’s vibrant yellow cover, complete with its iconic, grinning ghoul with sky-high hair and a tattered jacket (collar up, of course) was, again, unlike anything I’d ever seen. It was so garish, obnoxious and just flat-out campy that I instantly knew I would love this band, regardless of the fact that I’d yet to hear a single song of theirs, save for “Haulass.”
I got the CD home, popped it in, and was amazed at what I was hearing. The music was simple, primitive, and full of all sorts of sexual allusions and horror movie imagery that, at the age of 12, I didn’t quite understand. But as of the exact second that “Garbage Man” came to its grinding, screeching halt, I was a Cramps fan for life. I began to spot little nods in their direction throughout pop culture too (for example: seeing a character wearing a T-shirt with that horrible smiling nightmare plastered across it in “Wayne’s World”), and it dawned on me: “This band is kind of a big deal.”
I discovered psychobilly sometime around 2003, and was thrilled to learn that my beloved Cramps had basically helped create the genre (keep in mind, my formative Cramps years were well before the advent of web 2.0; I couldn’t just go online and learn everything I wanted to know about them yet). The term was borrowed from a Johnny Cash song, and used on gig posters for the Cramps as a sort of carnie-esque shout to passers-by. It worked, apparently, as the fusion of rockabilly and punk rock would eventually be dubbed, simply, psychobilly. This discovery brought me even further into the Cramps’ fold, as I found myself scouring every medium possible trying to track down any release that I could by them. I went from being a fan to being flat-out obsessed. Posters lined my walls, CDs and records piled on my shelves… Hell, I even named my cat after Interior: Lux Inferior (because no one could ever be as great as the man himself). I began dressing like them, became enraptured with rockabilly, surf rock and campy old B-grade horror movies. Watching videos of Lux onstage made me finally come out of my shell. It’s no exaggeration when I say that the Cramps changed my life. Years have passed, and my tastes have changed, but my obsession with them never subsided. Last year I acquired a copy of the band biography “The Cramps: A Short History Of Rock N Roll Psychosis” by Dick Porter, and reading it was like reading into the hidden past of a good friend. I learned things about them, their place in American rock history, and Lux and Poison Ivy’s long-running, and deep connection. I’ve never read a book about a band before that completely changed the way I thought about them. Porter’s short biography made me love them even more, and had me fully convinced that a documentary about their long career is something that simply has to be made.
But I’m rambling. Yesterday, while at work, I received a phone call. A friend had spotted a black cat dead at the side of the road who bore a striking resemblance to my Lux Inferior. She called me stating that she had a strange feeling after seeing it, and wanted me to call her back. Since I was at work, this wasn’t really an option, but a few hours later I received a text message. It held four words that I had hoped I’d never have to read:

Lux Interior is dead.

I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. I’ve been upset over the deaths of heroes before. Joey Ramone, Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer… Theirs, and plenty of others’ deaths have affected me deeply, causing me to break down in tears in a few instances. Interior’s passing, though, has me even lost for a proper reaction. I don’t know how to feel. I always joked that the secret to eternal life is buried somewhere in Lux Interior’s DNA. Even at 62, he barely looked any different than he did 20 years prior. He and Ivy, despite a reckless lifestyle and onstage antics that illustrated a complete abandon for his personal wellbeing, were the picture of health and the very definition of what it means to age gracefully. Christ, Bryan Gregory, their original rhythm guitarist looked worse than either of them did in their 50s when he died at 46. It’s somewhat earth-shattering to realize that someone who you can’t help but think will never die just….left.
I never got a chance to see the Cramps live, and that is something that I will always deeply regret. It was a lifelong dream of mine to meet Lux Interior. I always wanted to tell him how much his music meant to me, and about the influence that he’s had on my life. I learned from Interior, which is more than I can say about most of my other favourite musicians. He was a trailblazer, a maverick, and a brilliant performer, and I had nothing but the utmost respect for him. When he disliked the handling of his band’s back catalogue, he bought it back and re-released it all himself. He never caved in to criticism, never backed down from his own vision of what the Cramps were, and how they were supposed to sound.

Lux: Your vision and your influence is nearly incomparable. You will always be missed, but never forgotten. I’m still waiting for my chance to meet you, it’s just a shame that that’s now so far away.

Ivy: My deepest condolences, and sincerest respects to you and yours. This sucks for me, and the legions of Cramps fans the world over, but I can’t even begin to imagine how horrible this must be for you.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing the Cramps, by all means check out my recommendations below:

• Gravest Hits (1979)
• Songs the Lord Taught Us (1980)
• Psychedelic Jungle (1981)
• Bad Music for Bad People (1984)
• Big Beat From Badsville (1997)

Over the years, I have developed a rather…let’s say “massive” collection of digital music. I have also recently become lucky enough to own a lovely little 8 GB iPod Touch. As a direct result of my acquiring this rather nice little MP3 player, I have, unfortunately, also been forced into using iTunes in order to put music onto it. I’m not sure that I can adequately express to you, the reader, just how much I hate this application. More specifically: I hate it in Windows. I’ve never used iTunes on a Mac, but I am told that it is a far more enjoyable experience on OS X than it is in Microsoft’s family of operating systems. This is, however, exactly my problem. Using iTunes on my reasonably well-equipped notebook is an experience that I would liken to having your teeth pulled out one by one. Through your asshole. Sure, it’s a great big universe-devouring behemoth of a media player, but that’s part of what’s wrong with it: it’s bloated and packed full of useless shit that bogs the application down during any and all tasks that it sputters and struggles to perform.
The other day, I reinstalled XP on the laptop in question. This means, of course, that I would have to reinstall iTunes in order to actually use my iPod again. This process is so loathsome and dreaded to me that I spent nearly 48 hours procrastinating and trying to avoid doing it. rebuilding a music library from nearly 500 GB of music is not, in any way, fun with iTunes. In my primary music player of choice, Foobar, it takes literally about 5 minutes to build my entire library within the application. On iTunes, it takes fucking hours. Why? Well for starters, when adding media files to iTunes, it takes for-fucking-ever to do something that it refers to as “processing album artwork.” Why? What are you “processing?” I tag the MP3 files with high resolution album artwork myself. It’s already there. You can easily display it. I also keep a hard copy J-PEG of each cover in the album’s respective folder. So why not do like every other media player ever and scan the album’s containing folder for image files? This takes literally 1 second, and it seems to work for Foobar, Winamp, Media Monkey, etc. Furthermore, it continues after “processing” the album artwork that is already there and does not need to be “processed” by “detecting gapless playback information.” What the fuck does that even mean? And why is this process almost completely exclusive to iTunes? I have never run into this with any other application, and based on my experiences it does absolutely nothing to improve the listening experience on iTunes. I would very much like to turn off both of these completely useless processes, but it is not possible. Much like most Apple products that I’ve used, user customization is kept to a bare minimum so as to prevent enjoyment of the service or product.
So now we know the first reason that I hate iTunes: useless, agonizingly slow processes. We are, sadly however, just getting started. My next major problem is the lack of a dynamically updating library. In every other media player I’ve ever used, I could tell the application to “monitor” my library folders. This means that if I added music to my computer, the software would find it on its own, and I didn’t have to add it to the library myself. Often, these functions could also be triggered with something like “Rescan Library” or “Search For New Files” or something like that. Apple’s pathetic, obese little iTunes has nothing like this. Oh sure, when you first boot the application after install, it will ask you to scan a given folder for audio and video files, but after that “Fuck you, asshole, you can add that shit yourself.” And iTunes then goes, flips on the television and watches “The Hills” for the next seven hours while you try to add an album to its library. It’s things like this that make me question why Apple ever even bothered to port iTunes over to Windows. Microsoft went to agonizing lengths to create a functional, user-friendly version of Office for Apple users to help eliminate compatibility issues, and Apple’s response a few years later was to dash off a half-assed version of their media manager and player that barely functions at times, and refuses to function at other times. That seems whiny, sure, but keep in mind that we’re now on version 8.0.2.20 and none of the problems that have existed since the first Windows version of iTunes have been addressed. At all.
One such problem is the way in which iTunes edit metatags in MP3 files. Often, after starting up iTunes to endure the painstaking hour-and-a-half or so that it takes to sync the bloody iPod, I scan through my library to find that iTunes has totally lost cover art, messed up artist and album artist tags, or just plain fucked my files’ metadata up to the point that I have to scour the entire 500 GB looking for misinformation and correcting data. It does this completely at random, and without warning, so it is often a wonderful, if somewhat unpleasant, surprise to find when I am rushed for time. It quite often results in me pulling out my barely-functioning old RCA player in order to avoid dealing with iTunes again. The flipside to this is editing metadata within iTunes. Quite often, attempting to embed album art in a group of MP3 files results in no change at all. The art is imported and assigned, but does not get written to the files. Meanwhile, starting up Mp3tag and putting it through the same process with the exact same files will get me the results I want. However, I have to restart iTunes because something as simple as a “Refresh” function was apparently completely beyond the developers who cobbled together this abomination.
Furthering my frustration is the complete lack of an ability to simply drag and drop files to a device. I would probably be less critical of this miserable software if, like every device I’ve owned outside of this current iPod, it was possible for me to simply open an Explorer window and drag the music I wanted onto the device. For that matter, even if I had to do so through iTunes. I would rather drag and drop music onto it than have to go through the process of creating a playlist and filling said playlist, then syncing that playlist to the iPod. And God forbid I should just want to add a single album to what’s already on there. No no, in those cases, I’d better fucking pray that I saved the playlist from the last syncing process. Otherwise, instead of iTunes maybe…I don’t know asking me whether or not I want to just add this album, or add it to what’s already on the iPod, it just erases the whole bloody device and sticks that lone album on there. This, and maybe I’m alone here (though I highly doubt it) is fucking insane. I mean whose fucking idea was this? That’s not “syncing” (which means “synchronize”), that’s “replacing” (which means “replace”). To my knowledge, if it were to synchronize the playlist in iTunes and the media on the iPod, it would add the media on the iPod to the playlist, while adding the single album in that playlist to the iPod; thus “synchronizing” the two end devices.
Goodness this has gone on rather long, hasn’t it? I think I’ll stop now before I get myself good and angry. Feel free to tell me in the comments about how stupid I am and that your first time using iTunes was better than the first time you had sex. Assuming, of course, that you have. Otherwise I suppose you can compare it to the first time you heard the Beatles.