George Clanton & Nick Hexum: Nostalgia - Abstruse & Overt

Catch some of my thoughts about the album of the Lost Summer of 2020, with special consideration towards activating nostalgia.

Relevant Links: The Bandcamp article mentioned above A previous post on George Clanton and vaporwave A post on FM-84 and nostalgia An older text post on M83

Dana Jean Phoenix's Pixeldust: Yesterday Through Today

Review and Discussion on Dana Jean Phoenix’s 2018 album Pixeldust.

Relevant links

Mentioned link on nostalgia and FM-84

FM-84's "Atlas:" Resonance and Nostalgia

Review and discussion on FM-84’s album Atlas (2016), with a special focus on nostalgia.

Relevant links

A very early post on M83

A bit more about how M83 uses nostalgia

A Long Time Coming: The Postal Service's "Give Up"

When I first moved back to Austin in 2009, my first job was at the Doughtery Arts Museum as the music teacher for their elementary age summer program. My wife was working just up the road at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden, and we commuted to the area. We ended up spending quite a bit of time that summer in the Zilker Park and Barton Springs area. Not a bad area to reacquaint myself with my hometown. Last summer, I have passed through the area with some regularity and found myself feeling nostalgic about that time.

Not that it was a better time: I was immersed in a stressful struggle to find a permanent job here while pushing to finish my Master’s thesis. There was a subtle feeling of liberation, however, that was embedded in all that uncertainty. Because nostalgia works the way it does, this feeling is what came when I sat down at a rickety picnic table at Flipnotics to enjoy an inexplicably overpriced cup of coffee and capture some thoughts about The Postal Service.



Although The Postal Service’s Give Up was originally released in 2003, the hype around its recent reissue late last spring would have the public think that is was an entirely new album. For those of us that missed out on it back then, it might as well be. When I admitted to my friends that I had never heard the album, it was a virtual record-scratch moment. I unapologetically follow my own path when it comes to the music I pay attention to, though, which (as I have stated before) puts me way behind on the hipness curve. Truly great albums eventually make it into the player - sometimes over a decade later!

And Give Up is, quite simply, a great synth-pop album (arguably “perfect,” to quote my Aiki Brother). It’s got infectious, playful melodies embedded within a musical landscape of surprising depth and subtle experimentation. Stylistically, The Postal Service recombines a variety of synth-pop tropes in multiple ways. Pretty much any electronic technique that has ever worked well up to the release of Give Up seems to make an appearance on the album: old-school analog, sampling, live instruments, looping, and probably lots of other approaches that I just don’t know about. The end result is both cohesive enough to be immediately engaging, but broad enough to satisfyingly unravel though multiple listenings



The lyrics, however, are the gift that keeps on giving. The quiet enlightenments about the everyday that flash through people's heads are given a simple and direct voice throughout Give Up. Using clear allegorical narratives, The Postal Service consistently toes the conceptual line between playfulness and profundity, mirroring the tension between liberation and pressure that surrounds the Barton Springs area for me now.



Although I picked it up on somewhat of a whim through word-of-mouth, Give Up turned into the definitive album of summer 2013.  Not only did I come to really enjoy it, I could put it on around almost anyone (including the Little One) at anytime and be assured of a positive reaction. The recent release also has a second disc with a few new tracks and a collection of covers.  This includes artists covering songs from Give Up as well as Postal Service covering other tunes.  It takes a band with some vision to cover a good Phil Collins song (an important distinction, because there are good ones and there are bad ones), but they pull it off pretty well.  Although this bonus disc doesn't quite stand on its own as an album, it is interesting, nonetheless.  Longtime fans of the band will probably find something interesting to check out here, as well.  For us newcomers, though, Give Up is worth the wait.

Daft Punk's "Random Access Memories" Breaks the Spell

Although in many ways, I am still on the fence about the new Daft Punk album, I have to admit I that I am enjoying the controversy that it seems to have stirred up. On the one side, the critics would have people believe that it is the most important album of 2013, but here on the street level it seems that praise for Random Access Memories is very rarely given without some reservation. At worst, a lot of Daft Punk fans, both old and new, simply don’t care for it.

Listening to it, I think this is understandable. Since 1997, Daft Punk has become associated with well-crafted, adventurous house and dance music, a style of “robot rock” reinforced by their mechanized stage presence. Despite releasing relatively little material in the past decade, Daft Punk have garnered a devoted following that hotly anticipated the release of Random Access Memories. As an intentional tribute to late 70s disco and early 80 synth-pop, however, the album is a challenge to Daft Punk’s well-established identity.

Well, we were warned. All of the early press indicated that any fan expecting well-defined electronica would most likely be disappointed, and its true.  The cybernetic pulse of One More Time and Digital Love is largely absent.  In fact, despite the persistence of vocoders and autotune to “robotize” vocals, there is significantly less mechanization present on Random Access Memories than expected. Overall, the album would sound much more at home in a roller rink circa 1978 than thumping at a late 90s rave.



But Daft Punk, in my opinion, have always been innovators. They pushed the boundaries of house music so far that they came to define it. With artists like deadmau5 and Ratatat now occupying the space that has opened up in that arena since their last proper house style release it is logical for Daft Punk to take steps to vacate.  For them to take such a dramatic turn towards nostalgia, however, begs the question: where does the innovation truly lie on Random Access Memories? How does retreading these waters deepen them?

While I do think that the album is enjoyable (not to mention pristinely produced), the tracks that overtly point to that era are not necessarily any better than the music actually of that era. I get the sense that if I really wanted to indulge in that kind of nostalgia, I would do just as well to listen to the artists that originally innovated the style. Daft Punk’s reinterpretations are not offensive, by any means, but not earth-shatteringly great.

What I do like about the album, however, is the proliferation of live instruments, and I think that this is the area in which Random Access Memories pushes Daft Punk into a new field. There are several tracks that feature their classic techno sounds, but also showcase live instruments attacking these textures with an improvisational fervor.



Here, the instinct of human hands plays off the drive of technological automation.  By its end, this tribute to the synth innovator responsible for Donna Summer's I Feel Love becomes an epic drum solo propelled the song's bass sequence.  I think its electrifying and epic - worth the price of admission!  This is the area that I would have liked to see Daft Punk step into with the Tron: Legacy soundtrack in their rearview mirror.

Additionally, with technology becoming more user-friendly and seemingly human in our everyday lives, the metaphor that Daft Punk was previously trying to sustain about themselves as "robots-making-music" could still be intact and, perhaps, even more profound as a "2.0 upgrade." Random Access Memories, however, just makes them seem like really, really talented producers dressed as robots. Spell broken.

The Format: Awkward Reflections and Profound Nostalgia

It was probably about 2006 or so when a friend of mine introduced me to The Format. I had just completed an academic project on nostalgia in cover bands, and I found myself regularly attending shows by a Queen tribute band called Queen for a Day. As you might guess, the person in the proverbial hot seat there was the lead singer. Freddie Mercury was arguably one of the greatest rock singers that ever lived, and his incredible prowess usually brings even the most subtle weaknesses in a vocalist into startling focus. The lead singer, Gregory Finsley, did respectable imitation. On one occasion, however, the band uttered the fateful words “we’d like to do an original,” and it was, predictably, a bit awkward.  In this singular instance, however, Finsley dropped his façade and let his natural voice be heard.

The point being, my first impression of The Format was that they reminded me of Queen for a Day when their lead singer freed himself of the nostalgic idiosyncrasies of Freddie Mercury. This was certainly enough to grab my attention. I liked the album I was given, but it was on a burned CD, and because I am the way that I am, I could not take it seriously until I had my own first-generation copy. I put it on my Amazon list.



Then, predictably, it sat there for quite awhile. It even was removed and added to the list on several occasions. The recent emergence and popularity of the band Fun., however, finally forced my hand. Nate Ruess, who was the lead singer of The Format, fronts this increasingly visible and musically interesting band. Their rising popularity made me feel a little guilty about never following through on The Format when the first opportunity arose. One thing led to another and I ended up with Interventions and Lullabies under the Christmas tree this year.

I guess it’s because so much time has now elapsed, but I don’t hear the Freddie Mercury comparison quite so strongly any more. If anything, Reuss seems like a less whiney, bolder Ben Folds, and I only make such a strong point of it above as the greatest of compliments.  Although I think that Reuss could do a solid Mercury impersonation if pressed, I believe that he is quite possibly the real deal on his own.  Along with co-writer Sam Means, he crafts and delivers genuine, direct, uniquely creative power pop that is both entertaining and thought-provoking.

It’s the street-level topics that The Format tackles in their lyrics that bestows Interventions and Lullabies with depth. In my book, lyrics often take a back seat to musical effectiveness, but on this album, musical effectiveness is inextricably wedded to its lyric content. Considering Reuss’ relatively young age when Interventions and Lullabies was released, his observations on life, death, music, fame, and nostalgia are intimate and often profound.



Because The Format were most active during the early 00s and gained more notoriety in retrospect (like another great pop band we all know and love), there is not much “vintage” video footage out there of the band playing. I did happen across a set of videos, however, that were somewhat disturbing in their familiarity. They are of The Format awkwardly playing an amazing set to virtually no one, which pretty much sums up what it was like to play in a band in that abysmal time between the record company monopoly that shattered in the late 90s and the independent artist models that bands subsist on today.



If I would have discovered Interventions and Lullabies back when it was first released in 2003, it would have complimented a couple of great underground pop albums that I had in rotation during that time.  As it is, though, nearly ten years after its release, it delivers so well on so many levels that I can't bring myself to take it out of the player. 

"Lonerism:" on All Fours with Tame Impala

The package arrived at just the right time. The last time I opened my mailbox before I turned in the key to the apartment office, it bore an Amazon order that included Tame Impala’s Lonerism. I deemed it auspicious: new house, new music. The first listen, however, occurred when I was on my hands and knees putting the first coat of grout sealant on between the bathroom tiles. Hardly ideal. Despite this humble introduction, the albums hyperreal homage to psychedelia immediately grabbed my attention and has evolved into an indispensable favorite.

Tame Impala has an awareness of sound that was immediately noticeable. They bring an idealized memory of the late 60s and early 70s to life in much the same way that M83 does with 80s neo-romantic synth-pop: as it is remembered rather than as it was. For example, the fuzzy stomp-shuffle of Elephant clearly owes a debt to the instrumental section of Money, but it feels too reverent for me to judge Tame Impala too harshly for this similarity.


In addition to a sophisticated understanding of sound, Tame Impala also has an elegant sense of melody that expresses itself instrumentally as well as vocally. They often breathe new life into a tune by introducing an arresting riff right before the fade-out, implying that perhaps there is space in their live persona for extended jamming.

Within a few weeks, I had cultivated a great affection for their hybridized “John Lennon sings for Pink Floyd” approach. Only when I stumbled across the video for Feels Like We Only Go Backwards, however, did I really appreciate how fully they are committed to this style.



In addition to accompanying a great song, the video for Feels Like We Always Go Backward is a pretty and engaging piece of animation.  It also feels like it would be a small step for the trip to devolve into a three-armed nightmare.  Its rippling, hand-drawn aesthetic creates a surreal tension, the same kind that imbued old-school cartoons like Yellow Submarine and some of the shorts from The Electric Company with a sense of both wondrous beauty and uneasy dread.

The rest of the album also refers clearly to this era, but, like other good nostalgia bands, Tame Impala reinterprets more than they retell.  To put it a different way,  Lonersim is not “from” or “of” the psychedelic era as much as it is a commentary that is built on the dreamscapes of yesteryear.  Its distinctive musicality and consistency, however, allows it to stand on its own - even when I was on all fours getting domestic with the tile.

The Year in Rush Part 10: The Neapolitan Power of the Three

At twenty albums in, and with CDs quickly becoming a thing of the past, how many more opportunities would I have to pluck a new Rush album from a record store shelf? Realistically, not too many, but I unselfishly left that honor to the Little One, who, just days away from being 10 months old, was on my hip as I entered Waterloo Records. I let her pick out a copy (with some encouragement) and she carried it for me to the checkout. Considering the smugly aloof experience I had with the Waterloo staff last year when I bought the new Yes album, I was wondering what kind of reaction I might get when she plopped Clockwork Angels on the checkout counter. This time, I escaped without incident, but I heard snippits of discussion between a group of staff members from across the aisles of the store:

“The new Rush is out…….”

“Neapolitan ice cream?”

“You’re out of control!”

There was a perceptibly snarky undertone to this exchange, but I didn’t really care. Rush showed up at a crucial time in my musical and social development, and the unified persona of artistic excellence and ambition that the Geddy, Alex, and Neil strove for as a unit served as a role model for me. They have been, as I stated at the beginning of this project, “my” band ever since. Nothing that the hipster crew could do or say would ever be able to dislodge that.

Like most fans, I was already somewhat familiar with Clockwork Angels. The first two tracks were released as digital “singles” over a year ago and were also included in the setlist of last year’s Time Machine tour. The rest of the album was written and recorded while the band was engaged in this tour, which is a unique setting for Rush’s recent compositional process. For several decades, the material on their albums was written as the band was coming off a break and preparing for a tour, and Lee once lamented that their albums did not always capture the song's live rendering. Because it was recorded while the band was actively touring, however, I think Clockwork Angels more accurately captures Rush’s trademark live energy.



Unlike many fans, however, I resisted the temptation to examine these tracks too closely. As a single, Caravan, with its twisting time changes and exploratory structure, seemed a bit confounding, but as the lead track to Rush’s first concept album, it’s an explosive opening statement. Arguably, all of Rush’s albums are conceptual, but not since the long-form songs of the 70s has the band tackled the idea of a story with character development and a climax, and they never did so in the full-album format. Peart is in his wheelhouse when he can employ a story as a vehicle, too, especially one with the descriptive richness of Clockwork Angels' steampunk-inspired imagery.

As usual on Tuesday, I later went to the dojo. I make no secret of my Rush zealotry amongst my fellow aikido practitioners, and before I had my shoes off, a person asked if I had heard the local radio promo that Waterloo Records had released for “new music Tuesday.” The spot posited that if Rush in the 70s was vanilla, and 80s Rush was chocolate, and in the 90s they were strawberry, then the new album was "Neapolitan ice cream."  The cryptic secret explained!

As flippant as this description is, in a superficial way it’s pretty fair. Rush’s recent predilection for mining their own repertoire as a repository for inspiration is more pronounced than ever, and is skillfully navigated on Clockwork Angels. The incendiary, muscular riffing of 2112 and Caress of Steel coexists with the focused, driving intensity of Signals, unified under the melodic emphasis and consistency of Counterparts. Even more exciting than watching these flavors bleed together is the comeback of the instrumental excursion. In the past, these gave Rush’s songs a sense of exploration and return, and that is excitingly recaptured  on Clockwork Angels.



Longtime Rush fans are usually prepared for some sort of reinvention of the band when a new album is released.  Clockwork Angels, however, musically encapsulates the bands history in a way that embraces, rather than challenges, their identity.  It sounds like Rush at their most memorable, which, at this stage in their career, seems to be an artistically gratifying path, not to mention a strategically smart one.  Fans that have felt disconnected from some of Rush's more stylistically jarring experiments in recent decades can jump back on board, while new fans don't have to understand their entire career to get where they are trying to say.

There is, of course, the danger of empty nostalgia in a situation like this, and there is, admittedly, a nostalgic aspect to the album, but it creates a tone of familiarity for the band's further progression.  In fact, although Clockwork Angels would be a shining end to Rush's long, engaging career, its exuberance makes me confident that "my" band still has outstanding work ahead of them.

To see the previous post in this series, click here.
To start over at the beginning, click here.

Brian Wilson's Return to the Beach Boys: The Big "What If?"

I like and respect The Beach Boys, but without Brian Wilson as the primary creative force behind the group, I am a lukewarm fan at best.  Without his vision, variously fractured lineups have danced precariously on the edge of becoming cruise ship lounge versions of the band, offering up very little more than paint-by-number versions of the songs that once defined them. Under normal circumstances I would not have given a 2012 release by the group much notice.

The new Beach Boys album, however, grabbed my interest. That’s Why God Made the Radio features Wilson returning to an “authentic” Beach Boys lineup with all surviving members. Many fans of Pet Sounds, like me, often love to play “what if..?” games with the Beach Boys’ creative arc if the band had supported Wilson’s vision for SMiLE. The potential of a true follow-up to these artistically adventurous albums, no matter how slim, earned it a spot on my Wish List which, like Etudes earlier this year, got it into my hand on my first Father’s Day.

That’s Why God Made the Radio is the first album of all-original Beach Boys compositions in nearly forty years, and it does capture the band’s classic aesthetic, particularly in the lush vocal arrangements.  However, the band froze their artistic progress decades ago in order to commercialize and cash in on their distinctive sound, so reproducing it is not that great a feat. In reality, the rusty melodic clichés associated with well-worn doo-wop progressions are sometimes too pronounced to ignore.

If the less daring tracks on That’s Why God Made the Radio were released by a younger band (like the Wondermints, who show up as studio contributors) they might leave a different impression. There is, however, a perhaps unfair distinction between purposely manipulating nostalgia and just being old-fashioned.

On the other hand, there are several moments on That’s Why God Made the Radio that acknowledge the potential of this seemingly impossible reunion.  Wilson’s relatively prolific solo output for the past decade often serves the album well.  At 70 years old, his expressive voice and compositional sensitivity preserve an almost childlike idealism, and when he takes center stage it is often sublimely beautiful. When the band focuses their still-intact vocal harmony on Wilson’s bittersweet arrangements, the rust flakes away to reveal the old deuce coupe, still running and cruising after all this time. Tracks like Pacific Coast Highway are easily worth the price of admission.



As it stands, That’s Why God Made the Radio doesn’t exactly pick up where Pet Sounds left off, but it certainly feels more uniformly genuine than anything else they have done since the late 60s. There are not many bands that can boast a credible creative spark in their fiftieth year of existence, but despite being somewhat uneven, the album suggests that The Beach Boys just might.

The Year in Rush Part 9: New Uses of Space and Time

As Rush’s timeline lengthened, the distance between their releases got wider and wider, but it wasn’t filled with empty space. In the six years leading up to Vapor Trails, Peart worked through an emotional burden that could have ended his career, an ordeal that is best recounted in his own words. My world radically changed in this gap, as well. The band I was playing in broke up, I graduated, began teaching in public schools, got married, and was subsequently divorced. I was a much different person by the time Vapor Trails was released in 2002. When it was announced, I was, of course, elated, but also skeptical. I had six years to get used to the idea that Rush was done, and after leaving on what I saw as a particularly low note in their catalog, I was uneasy about their return.

Vapor Trails, however, ended up being a compelling entry into Rush's canon. It is, admittedly, a casualty in the “loudness war” that producers were waging in the 00s, but that doesn’t hide the strengths of its distinctive compositional approach. Rush was focusing on creating a singular, synergistic sound to support Peart’s lyricsm, which now carried a noticeable emotionalism borne of experience. There were few guitar solos and noticeably dense chordal bass work from Lee. Traditional structures like choruses and verses were downplayed in favor of a more egalitarian flow from one musical idea to the next.

Most often, this approach worked. The overwhelming majority of the songs on Vapor Trails are gripping, and in some cases, the album’s cacophonous production enhances the vital drive that is a key element to Rush’s finest work. I find the explosive stabs of noise in Peaceable Kingdom to be particularly electrifying.


When they began their support tour, however, the issues of production melted away, and the band’s characteristic energy emerged. When I saw them on this tour, and the ones that followed throughout the decade, I felt that not only were they playing better than ever, but the quality of their sound continued to improve exponentially, as if stage sound had finally caught up to what they had been doing in the studio since the late 70s.

Although many of my memory episodes connected to previous Rush albums were of the people that I shared the actual listening experience with, their post – 2000 material brings contemporaneous experiences as a music teacher to the surface. Vapor Trails, for example, will always remind me of moving percussion equipment around the campus of Texas State University during All-State Solo and Ensemble contest in 2002. Additionally, the cultural impact of Guitar Hero had a positive influence on Rush’s relevance, and I sometimes engaged in critical discussions with students about Rush’s newer releases. In 2006 I went so far as to assign one of my jazz band drummers, who was musically studious but academically ineligible, to write a written review of Peart’s playing on Snakes and Arrows.

He pointed out, quite correctly, that overall, Snakes and Arrows has a noticeably relaxed feel. More subtly, however, the prominent appearance of the "Hemispheres chord" in the introduction of Far Cry indicates an intentional move to evoke nostalgia for the devoted fan, a strategy that extends into the song’s attendant video, as well as the album as a whole.



Although in some ways, Rush was self-sampling on Snakes and Arrows, their relaxed and confident playing is also reified in the album’s formatting. It is a unique mélange of songs and freestanding instrumentals that is unprecedented in the band’s catalog. Some of these tracks are quite short. In the distant past, these tidbits would have found their way into Rush’s extended work as connective tissue between larger ideas, but on Snakes and Arrows they find a life of their own as standalone compositions. 



As Rush and I grew up together, I often wondered how they would be able to maintain their intensity in a believable way as the years passed. Snakes and Arrows is a perfect example of what a mature version of the band I loved since I was a teen would sound like. More than any other album it is a culmination of everything Rush had done up to the point of its release. Its intensity is tempered by an unperturbed self-assurance that kept my passion for the band alive as a devout, if cautious, fan.

This fervor makes tomorrow a particularly exciting day, then, because Rush’s newest album, Clockwork Angels, is going to be released. There is the opportunity to hear nearly this entire album online, but I have tried to keep myself in the dark as much as possible to preserve the experience. Of course, my willpower has cracked a couple of times, and what I have heard has only whetted my appetite. The final entry for this project will be a review of Clockwork Angels, and I hope that I can be patient enough with myself to reserve judgment until the excitement of new Rush material dies down – just a little.

The previous post in the series is right here.
The next, and last (?) post is here.

"Hurry Up, We're Dreaming:" M83's Perfect Nostalgia

Music is often described as “dreamlike,” a description that points to music’s capacity as a medium to re-imagine and perceive reality in alternative ways. Conceptually, M83’s most current release Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is a grandiose exploration of dreaming's elusive nature, so it seems a little too easy to resort to this tried-and true description.

But when M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzalez dreams, he dreams the dreams of Donnie Darko. Awash in synth and reverb, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming turns the pop conventions of the past into a distinctly 21st century psychedelia, in which the saxophone is somehow more epic than the guitar and the arena is more intimate than the club. If nostalgia had its own melody, played on a complex instrument of sight and sound, M83’s recreation of idealized 80s teen angst would be a virtuosic symphony. 



Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, however, isn’t really an 80s rehash - certainly less so than its 2008 predecessor Saturdays=Youth. It’s far too expansive and bold to be authentically of that era. However, like Pink Floyd and Sigur Ros, M83 ‘s music harbors the capacity to suggest that there is a more subtle narrative hidden within its distinctive atmospheres. The melodic and structural shape of M83’s compositions infuse the simple, everyday task of driving down the highway at sunset with a vivid, romantic emotionalism that is, predictably, difficult to verbalize.



The album’s nostalgia influences its physical shape, as well. The CD is printed as a double album, a notoriously difficult format that has no real meaning in our evolving "media cloud" culture. Gonzalez, however, intends for the listener to listen to Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming as a whole experience, rather than consumed in a shuffled playlist. The album has several instrumental viginettes that connect its more anthemic "singles," and this connective tissue might seem like filler when taken out of context. Within the framework of the album, however, they create narrative depth and unity that connects Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming with the concept album tradition. If there were a more direct segues between tracks, this trait would be even more noticeable.

Nostalgia, in and of itself, is not a negative phenomenon, but it can be limiting. Music is often a trigger for memories that are linked to a particular moment in time, which are the fuels that fire nostalgia.  As much as music cultivates these fond recollections, their idealized reconstruction can obscure the potential of the present.  This is when people get in a musical "rut," listening to the same old stuff.  M83 intentionally travels through the present to the past. Whether the 80s succeeded in predicting the future or nostalgia caused this prophecy to be self-fulfilling is probably less important than the overall success of Hurry Up, We're Dreaming in bridging this gap.  I also predict that the album will reveal deeper musical layers as the months and years imbue it with its own nostalgic value.

Grizzly Vear, the Vaccines, and Retracing my Steps

In the last 24 hours, I feel like I have retraced the steps of my life more meticulously than I have in the past five years. After a successful pep rally performance on Friday afternoon, I had the opportunity to enjoy an after-school snack with two very dear friends that I have not seen for nearly twenty years. Both of them played trombone with me from middle school through graduation, and it was nothing short of amazing to sit with these two gentlemen that were there during the formative stages of my musicianship. I stuffed my face with peel-and-eat shrimp and, too soon, had to hit the road for a quick “guerrilla-style” trip to Denton. I was met with the jagged symbolism of these provocative lyrics.

What Did You Expect From the Vaccines? is a bit of a diversion from my recent listening. The Vaccines don’t engage in a lot of subtle complexity or cross-cultural issues. They do, however, have a clever and immediately memorable libretto. For me, a person who usually doesn’t pay attention to the words of a song until much later in the game, it is unusual for lyrics to take hold during an early listen. Imbedded as they are, however, within the Vaccines’ expansively reverbed Ramones-meets-the-Smiths soundscape, the Vaccines wordplay invokes a distraught nostalgia that straddles decades.

When I got to Denton, I attempted to make a surprise appearance at my previous school’s Band Alumni performance. I turned down the road that, for a very, very long time, I drove daily to work. That particular stretch of what used to be farmland is haunted by my past, but in the last three years the feel of the entire area has changed dramatically. Now the stadium chokes out the moonlight that used to illuminate the countryside, and the school’s Performing Arts Center towers high like a monolith. Unfortunately, I got in just a little too late and the stadium was empty.

It was an arresting spectacle. My mind was divided, however, between the barren monuments of recent rural expansion and Grizzly Bear’s lushly textured 2009 release Veckatimest. Grizzly Bear was unanimously suggested by multiple sources, and listening to them now leads me to wonder how I have missed them up to this point. Their left-of-center psychedelic pop represents the kind of accessible experimentation that I find appealing. I was even more impressed to find out that their dreamy ambience is more than a studio construction: it is the result of the excellent musicianship of the band's members.



I just woke up at 6am at my Aiki Brother’s house (when you teach in a public school and have a newborn, that’s virtually opulence). Later this morning, I will achieve my aim for the weekend: the dojo where I “grew up” is changing locations, and there is now a disturbing “for rent” sign hung in the window. This will be the last time I practice in the space. The time and experiences my Aiki Brother and I had in that space will soon only exist in our memories of the past and the movements of the present. The people that we practice with, however, will be the glue that binds the two spaces together. I am looking forward to seeing them.

As nostalgic as I am about the people I have seen and thought about this weekend, there are not many things that I see as more distinctively Denton than a couple of decidedly non-Paleo breakfast tacos from Casa Galaviz and sitting down for some coffee at Jupiter House. Although Austin has coffee houses and breakfast tacos galore, they all seem to pale in comparison to these two iconic establishments. I anticipate a fine breakfast before the throwing commences.

Wilco and the Magician's Circle: Reminiscing on the 4th

On July 4^th I was wearing a shirt that, on any other day, would have been ridiculous.  The left half of my chest was covered with a blue, star-spangled field, while the rest of the shirt had vertical white and red stripes.  Back in the day, when I played live, I used to wear this as a stage shirt.  These days, it only comes out on July 4^th, and I can always count on getting salutes from passers-by when I have it on - or at least incredulous glances.  We were coming to join my friend and his wife (aka the Best Man and the Minister) at the pool, and this collared hyperpatriotic nightmare threw them off so much that they did not recognize me at first.  I assured them that I wore the shirt satirically.

I happily shed it in the heat, though, and my wife and I joined them in the water for a relaxing afternoon of catching up.  Our conversations wandered through dubstep, chaos theory, moving, childbirth, the structure of Indian ragas, dojo politics, and gossip both meaningful and meaningless.

There was a jam box tuned in to some satellite radio station providing the ambient accompaniment to the flow of our conversation.  It would occasionally spit out a tune that was familiar to someone, but a particular song pulled me out of the conversation, not just because it’s a good song, but because of the associations it brought back. 

It stopped me in my tracks because I had not heard or even thought of Wilco in many years.  Heavy Metal Drummer is from an album called Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which was a critically acclaimed and generally trendy album to be into in 2002.  I was living in Denton at the time and hanging with a very close circle of friends, many of whom are still very dear to me. 

One guy, the Magician, I unfortunately don’t see so much anymore.  He moved on for job opportunities, but when we were close he and his wife used to have the whole crew over for dinner and a movie.  I particularly remember laughing uncontrollably at reruns of Mr. Show when it was released on DVD.  The Magician was an avid fan of Wilco, and, despite my uncontrollable slide back into obscure progressive rock, he convinced me to check out Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.  I borrowed his CD, burned it, AND made a tape copy (yes, tape!).  I promised myself that I would one day purchase a full CD copy. 

Eventually, I got a new car with a CD player and my tapes became obsolete.  I finally threw them out, but I did take the time to put Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on my Amazon list.  It has been sitting there since 2005. 

My 4^th of July poolside encounter brought back that time so viscerally that I immediately came home and finally made good on my promise.  Coming back to the whole album after almost a decade, I can say that it has held up exceptionally well, and lives up to its hype.  Ultimately, Wilco’s songs are melodic and tuneful, but also incredibly imaginative and subtly complex.  There is something special and possibly classic about Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and it would be a shame if it were sort of lost in the shuffle during the music industry’s struggle to reorganize in the early 00s.

Several of the people that we were sharing our 4^th of July with were also in Magician’s circle back in the day.  I mentioned how Heavy Metal Drummer reminded me of that time, and we all, as a group, stared blankly off into the horizon for the briefest of moments.  If anyone was watching us, they probably would have missed it, but it was there.  It was almost as if, for a split second, we were all going back and reliving it.  In actuality, though, I think that we were having a reverent moment of silence for a set of dearly cherished experiences that had long since passed.    

Astra's "The Weirding" and Musical Patina

It seems like have been I emphasizing a lot of high-polish pop music. I don’t want to give the wrong impression about my interests - although the last post focused on a couple of bands that play on the 80s, that’s not the only flavor we got on tap at this yogurt shop.  Additionally, I don’t want to drone on and on about nostalgia, because it’s probably only interesting to me, but I’d like to use the band Astra, another current favorite, to illustrate what I mean by the term "patina."

Patina refers to the process by which a piece of art is distressed to give the impression of antiquity. For example, say you purchase a new Victorian-style table. Initially, because it comes from the present, it looks new. When it is “antiqued,” however, it is sort of beat up in a specific way that makes it seem like it comes from a different time. It makes the table seem more authentic, even though in truth it is a contemporary work. It has been patinated.
 
Since nostalgia is a longing for an idealized past in the present, the idea of patina is important, and I think that music can also have a nostalgic patina. I initially came across "The Weirding" through the Dutch Progressive Rock Page’s review section.  It was when it caught my eye again and again during my regular Waterloo Records walkthrough, however, that my well documented past of prog-rock snobbery kept me circling like a shark. Seriously, check out the cover:

 

Despite its 2009 release date, "The Weirding" looks like a post-apocalyptic 70s Roger Dean cover on a terrible trip. Any prog-rock nut would be bonkers not to give this a second look. Still, I am a cynic, and it took the independent suggestion of a couple of well-versed music fans who were complimentary of Astra’s live show to get me to move in for the kill (you know who you are - thanks, guys).

Astra is a pretty underground group at the moment, so they don’t have many high-end performance videos floating around. Check out this really interesting fan-made video to “The Rising of the Black Sun” to get an idea of where they are coming from.


 

This particular track has a Hawkwind-ish vibe to it, but the entirety of “The Weirding” is almost like a “Where’s Waldo?” of psychedelic and progressive references.  I can pick out traces of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” – era Rick Wakeman, just to name a couple.  The patina I hear on this recording comes from the production, especially as it relates to the drums.  They sound a little boxy and flat by current standards, but are very reminiscent of way the drums sound on the 1969 King Crimson track “In the Court of the Crimson King.”  I suspect that this is an intentional decision to lend "The Weirding" an atmosphere of authenticity.

Although the sound quality of this next clip is a little blown-out, it provides an idea of what Astra is up to in a live setting.

Here, the patina is more visible. Sure, they look the part of the space rockers, but check out that pretty white thing under his right elbow – the mellotron. The mellotron was and is an unwieldy and fragile pre-moog keyboard instrument that was the cornerstone of the Moody Blues’ early sound. Why use an actual mellotron, though, when modern sampling makes lugging such a beast around and keeping it in tune a moot practice? For musical patina: to give the impression of antiquity and authenticity, despite the fact that Astra is a contemporary band that is referencing a certain stylistic period.

Please keep in mind that none of this is supposed to be a slam on Astra. I am totally invested in the era of psychedelic prog that they are so effectively playing with, and I like the way that they are doing it. It is because they are so good at it that I can hopefully make sense of this patina idea and refer to it later.

The French Connection: M83 and Phoenix

To animate a recording within my imagination, I often do YouTube searches, read reviews, and read Wikipedia listings.  Although you guys get to see the end results of this rather obsessive practice, I never really know when it will work out, and sometimes the results create abstract connections between unrelated things.  For example, last February I was listening to several new albums during the annual road trip to TMEA in San Antonio.  The hotel room at the La Quinta where I stayed had wifi, and in the evenings as I got ready for bed, I did a little online piddling into some of the bands that were then currently grabbing my attention.  The access was intolerably slow, resulting in a stuttering, halted “streaming video” experience that seemed more like an upload on dial-up.  Despite this, several clips “came to life” and I kept them up in my browser to rewatch during the isolation of this stay.  Two of them stood out as being particularly good, neo-80s retro and, by coincidence, French. 

For those of us that were in the 80s, it is no secret that the music largely sucked.  We don't like to admit it, and there were lots good songs, to be sure (the visibility of which was largely decided by the attendant video), but good “albums” were hard to come by.  When we look back on that era, however, the “rose-colored glasses of nostalgia” allow us to look back fondly.  Apparently, sailors of yore who spent long periods at sea would sometimes suffer from profound homesickness that they called “nostalgia.”  For us, though, it is not so much homesickness, but a longing for an idealized version of the past that may not even be our own.  Today, we live, eat, and breathe the stuff.

Pontificating at length on nostalgia probably deserves its own blog post (possibly one with a warning label).  I’ll spare you for now….

In any case, it’s hard to say exactly how I got into Phoenix – they just kept “coming up.”  I saw their name here and there and put “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix” on last year's Christmas list.  I found it to be a pretty compelling and consistent set of mid-80s style synth/power pop.  Although I initially did not crave it, I certainly enjoyed it every time it came up in the player.  Then I found this performance clip of them on David Letterman:

Blam! Oh, yeah – that song.  You probably heard “1901” all over the place last year.  It was even in a car commercial.  Although Phoenix’s work has a studio polish, it seems that they have the capacity to reproduce this polish in a live context is a way that, due to technological differences, was not conceivable in the 80s live setting.  They, in the words of my good friend John, "kill it" on this vid.  For me, the entire album sounded different after I saw this clip and abstracted an idea of how they potentially execute their songs in performance.

With M83, on the other hand, I had slightly different experience.  I first heard them during the closing credits of Horror Remix, and proactively sought them out.  I bought “Saturdays=Youth” simply because it was the most current album by M83 that Waterloo Records had in stock, but it turned out to be a good one.  It’s an explicit tribute to the 80s, and it does a hauntingly compelling job of capturing the standard-issue radio ambience of this timeframe.  It seems to have “instant nostalgia:”  it immediately began to bring back discolored visions of my high school hallways and heartaches, even though none of the songs served as the soundtrack to (or even existed during) that era of my life.  Even weirder, I eschewed mainstream music in high school, leaning towards my own youthful progressive rock elitism.  Regardless, I was quite enamored of “Saturdays=Youth” by the time I found this clip:

While this live clip of "Kim & Jessie" may not have the flawless execution of “1901,” it certainly shows a nostalgic 80s style.  That these bands are both French and spontaneously came to have meaning to me on a solitary trip to San Antonio a year ago connects them in only my imagination and experience.  In any case, both of these examples come from albums that are now consistent favorites, so much so that I have been hesitant to get deeper into their catalogs.  If anyone has feedback on any other albums by M83 or Phoenix, please give me a shout-out.