Kentucky Cocktail

Just a couple of upcomming releases that I am fairly excited about:

Like many, I was a big fan of At the Drive In and was extremely upset when they decided to call it quits a few years ago. Knowing that I would never see them perform live was almost as much of a dagger in the heart as knowing that I would never see Pavement perform live (but that’s another issue)

Since disbanding, they have pretty much split into two camps; Sparta and The Mars Volta and in my ears, seperated quite cleanly in terms of style.   Sparta seems to take the ‘heavy rock/ punk’ style, where Mars Volta take the ‘arty style’, both maintaining the intensity of At the Drive In.

The problem is, in all honesty, I don’t really like either of them, and have found it hard, try though as I might, to connect with either band’s music.  I like Cedric Bixler’s unusual lyrics, but feel like he needs to be reigned in from time to time, and while I enjoy Sparta’s steady layered wall of sound style, I get easily bored by it.

Whenever attempting to listen to either of these bands, I just get caught up in the nostalgia of what they were and it makes me a little sad.

Thanks for listening.

P.S. here is a decent article about Sparta from Beat.

I literally just came across Alaska in Winter about twenty minutes ago, but am convinced he’s got great potential. One track in particular I am enjoying- Close your Eyes which features Zach Condon of Beirut (see Gulag Orchestrators post).

Check out Alaska in Winter’s myspace page for a taste!

I had this friend who whenever he purchased a new CD, always immediately skipped to the sixth song, then the last song. His reasoning, however odd it may sound, was that if the sixth song and the last song are good, then the entire album will be also.

There was a weird little article in today’s Age about a study on the “discrepancy between the emotion expressed in a song and the emotion felt by the listener”.

I totally disagree with the article labelling it as the ‘reason’ kids today don’t like Barry Manilow (but do like John Butler?). It’s almost saying that people just don’t like some music because they don’t like it. You don’t like music you don’t connect with emotionally? Well, duh.

That said, it is kind of an interesting angle to take. I’m thinking of the songs I most loathe, which for autobiographical reasons tend to be songs on high rotation on Nova Perth circa 2004.

Simple Plan’s ‘Welcome to My Life’, for instance, induces quite real nausea within me. I know I’m supposed to think about how misunderstood I am, and how life sucks – and I have thought that way before, and so have you – but his teenage white-boy pain just feels so very fake. There is no connection there at all. He feels sad, but I feel mild disgust, and thus the “differential affect gap” between me and Simple Plan is something like 97%.

The bit where I feel the article gets it wrong is that it’s not the emotional gap that’s interesting so much as the question as to why there is an emotional gap. And that’s pretty tough one. I can think of a few reasons as to why that song objectively sucks (encourage me to!) but I suspect they are largely rationalisations covering some deeper questions about the reasons I like what I like.

I would probably use the word ‘whiny’ to express my dislike of Simple Plan, but I love Elliot Smith, Cat Power, and the Dismemberment Plan. Have they not whined?

To say that certain artists simply feel different emotions to me misses the point. There’s a lot else going on, whether you label it some kind of objective ‘quality’ or mere fashion.

Patrick Wolf clearly disregards the common ‘Red heads can’t wear red’ myth

This is not one of those ‘Who is..’ things where I then go and explain a little bit about who some person is. No, I seriously want to know who this guy is, and should I really care? I am only asking because on Wednesday I opened up my trusty street press to find his face splattered all over the place, much to my puzzlement.

All I can gather thus far is that he has fire engine red hair and is in someway mixed up with Kelly Osborne. That and he’s supposed to be some kind of pop prodigy. I am slighly sceptical to say the least.

Anyone, anyone?

I am not very technologically savy. I came to the music downloading table very late, and am pleased with the amount of music I now have access to which previously I was too poor to buy. The only downside I have found thus far is that instead of a colourful Cd collection on my shelf, I have an increasing number of ugly transparent cases and silver discs with bad writing. Maybe it shouldn’t matter, but I feel like there is something missing when I burn a new Cd and have no liner notes to accompany it. There’s an exciting feeling about flipping through the pages of a new Cd, seeing the artwork that accompanies the music and having something tangible to hold.