It was probably around 1991 when I purchased the full Twin Peaks series box set on VHS. At that point, I had never seen the show, but was my intention to watch it in Denton while a couple of close friends from High School simultaneously watched it in Austin. In theory, we agreed to watch an episode a week and have discussions when we visited every few weeks. In practice, none of us had any idea how addictive the show would be. We quickly became prototypical “binge-watchers,” secretly going ahead with “just one more episode.” Our plan to watch the show over the course of months barely lasted a week, but our respect and interest in the work of David Lynch stretched out into the decades to follow.
After Twin Peaks, I followed Lynch’s work unwaveringly, and I started to notice that some images and events recur in his work. I started to give them pet names: The Transformation, the Jagged Carpet, The Scream, etc. These Lynchian tropes seemed symbolic in a way similar to Salvador Dali’s use of melting clocks and ants as surrealistic images. In an attempt to give this armchair analysis of his work some credence, I often referred to these as Lynch’s “iconography.”
One role I named “The Chanteuse.” It takes the form of a lip-synched musical performance, almost (but not always) performed by a female actor in a private late-night setting. In Twin Peaks, this character was represented by Juliee Cruise, but it shows up in nearly all of David Lynch’s films in one form or another. In 2001’s Mulholland Drive, for example, he goes so far as to acknowledge the symbolic nature of this character, providing some uncharacteristic insight as to its meaning.
Lynch is gearing up to be back in the spotlight again with the imminent release of the new Twin Peaks season this coming May. Suffice it to say that I am extremely excited. If the hints that we have gotten through the show’s casting are any indication, the role of The Chanteuse might very well be played by Austin musician Chrysta Bell. Which is great - Bell is an incredible artist that fits the aesthetic perfectly. If the Twin Peaks revival is the beginning of a new creative arc, however, I would make a case to Mr. Lynch to consider the Turkish art-rocker Gaye Su Akyol for a future incarnation of The Chanteuse.
Gaye Su Akyol’s most recent release Hologram Imperatorlugu is an engaging blend of gypsy-flavored tradition and twangy guitar rock that seems ready-made to plug into one of David Lynch’s late-night soirees. Her image fits seamlessly within the already established characteristics of the role. Not only does her music blend “otherness” with familiarity, Gaye Su Akgol also captures the aloof distance that The Chanteuse almost always exudes. Bubituzak, her backing band, extends the sense of mystery by performing in cyptic black masks. It is not a stretch to envision her performing to an enthralled audience teetering on the brink of an otherworldly encounter.
I feel pretty certain, however, that Chrysta Bell has a lock on the role for the new Twin Peaks episodes. I am grateful in any case, because I never realistically thought that I would see a continuation of the Twin Peaks series. Her presence in the cast is particularly exciting because it suggests that Lynch might be as interested in injecting new blood into the show as he is in revisiting the things that made it so engaging in the first place. This makes me think that Gaye Su Akyol could not only play the part of The Chanteuse in the future, but also could contribute to its continued evolution by diversifying its cultural background even further.
My PS3 had been dying a slow death for over a year, and somewhere during the move to Denton it finally bit the dust. Although I don’t game very much, I used the console as the central entertainment unit in our house for playing music and streaming video. I embedded a PS4 in our move-in purchases and was horrified to find the PS4 doesn’t support the CD format - at all. There is a Blu-Ray player on the console that is entirely capable of reading music CDs, but it just doesn’t.
My past method of uploading CD’s into the console hard drive for play in the house simply would not work, and this was a very serious problem of the first-world variety. I have known for a long time that the CD is a dying format, but to suddenly not be able to play them in the house at all seemed unconscionable. Due to limited libraries and unethical artist compensation policies, I refused to submit to Spotify or Amazon Prime. I just needed access to my own library. After quite a bit of soul-searching and scrolling through PS4 forums, the answer came in the form of an app called Plex.
Plex allows me to use my computer as a media server and stream my music straight to the PS4, giving me open access to all the music on my computer. Not only that, it painlessly and beautifully organizes albums, displays cover art, and manages playlists. Despite having a few minor bugs, Plex really changed the game for me. I uploaded the entire Superhero Theme Project, complete with track-specific images, and created playlists based on my end-of-year best of posts from the last six years.
Over Spring Break, I ripped CDs to my computer with the renewed vigor of a full-fledged music nerd. Several of these albums are currently in rotation in the car, which represents my listening since my birthday. My birthday was actually at the end of January but, due to some date confusion, I got a second stack of albums at the end of February, too. Not a bad deal.
The Flaming Lips - Oczy Mlody: There is a lot to like about the album, but it wanders. I am still not sure if The Flaming Lips’ current direction has a larger point to make that I just haven’t locked into or if they are just being weird for the sake of being weird.
Run the Jewels - RTJ3: RTJ3 definitely picks up where its predecessor left off, but doesn’t seem to have the standout tracks that kept me coming back to RTJ2. It took me months to really appreciate RTJ2, however, so I will let this one simmer for a while.
The Neal Morse Band - The Similitude of a Dream: I am a huge fan of Neal Morse but, paradoxically, not a devoted follower of his solo work. This album garnered great critical praise, most of which is deserved, but there are a few “tribute band” moments that I have to accept.
The xx - I See You: The xx’s debut album played a big, big role in my soundtrack for 2010, but the follow-up Coexxist seemed like more of the same, but not quite as good. I See You doesn’t change the formula, but it does contain enough new elements to stand on its own and still capture the vibe that made their debut so great.
Gaye Su Akyol - Hologram Imperatorlagu: Really great Turkish artist that very effectively syncretizes Western rock and traditional ideas. David Lynch should pick her up as his new chanteuse.
The Dirty Projectors - Dirty Projectors: The mixed reviews that this album have received are, unfortunately, well deserved. Mixed is the key - it teeters between jumbled genius and obvious self-indulgence, which runs counter to the consistency of its predecessor.
Astronoid - Air: Stumbled across this “dream thrash” group and have been really impressed with it after several listens. Its Mew meets Deafheaven vibe is pretty unique amongst my listening right now.
Jóhann Jóhannsson - Arrival OST: Knowing that I will most likely watch this movie sometime, I looked into this soundtrack and discovered that Jóhannsson is a pretty interesting composer with an intriguing body of work. While the Arrival soundtrack may not reach the great heights of Interstellar, it immediately commanded my attention and has held it for weeks.
The Proper Ornaments - Foxhole: This album sits at the crossroads of pre-Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd and late 90s power pop mush. It’s an entertaining background listen, but doesn’t offer up much in the way of innovation.
The Devin Townsend Project - Transcendence: I gained respect for Devin Townsend’s vocal talents way back when he sang lead for Steve Vai’s ill-fated “Vai” group. Here he is unapologetically epic and bombastic in all the right ways.
United Vibrations - The Myth of the Golden Ratio: Like its name implies, Universal Vibrations gets all of their influences into just the right balance to create something exciting and distinctive. It has the jazzy, political rock side of Dream of the Blue Turtles, but with a distinctive Afrobeat flavor.
Yussef Kamaal - Black Focus: An engaging foray into contemporary jazz/soul/funk that shared quite a bit of airtime in the house during Spring Break. I am looking forward to a more focused listening in the coming weeks.
I watched Obama’s election as I was moving to Austin from Carrollton with no small amount of anticipation and excitement, and when he won the Presidency the world felt different. Although might have been inexperienced at the time, I had some conviction that he had the best interests of the country at heart, an opinion that did not change much during his tenure. I was proud to be an American and was genuinely hopeful about the future.
This inauguration, conversely, filled me with dread. I felt, and still feel, anxious about the natural and social environment that my kids will be looking at in the near and far future. Like many, I have traveled through stages in dealing with this new reality, so during my denial phase I made it my goal to avoid the inauguration entirely to keep the ratings down. This may seem escapist, but I justified it by showing my lack of support in any way possible. The same weekend, I put Oczy Mlody in rotation.
There seemed to be no better way to escape reality than to sink into the soft non-euclidean psychedelia of The Flaming Lips. Very few bands have been able to retain both a modicum of visibility and the kind of artistic freedom that The Flaming Lips enjoy. They could literally put out an album of duck sounds and people would at least take notice. That being said, I was on the fence about this one.
In the band’s primary narrative, there has been an attempt to collapse their experimental side with mainstream songwriting in search of a singular, cohesive statement. This, I like. Simultaneously, however, they have been diversifying in ways that aren’t as convincing, releasing shark-jumping cover albums and collaborations. Despite my long-term investment in the band, these recent releases made me consider taking a pass on Oczy Mlody. The video for The Castle, however, immediately sold me.
Oczy Mlody is the first “proper” Flaming Lips album since The Terror, which took darker themes and washed them over with buzzy experimentalism. In comparison, Oczy Mlody juxtaposes brighter, trippy songs against psychedelic sound experiments. This approach allows them to incorporate a broad spectrum of sounds that they have explored in other non-traditional formats, from multi-jambox CD releases to flash drives released in gummi skulls.
But I see The Flaming Lips as primarily an album band. For decades, they have released consistently coherent recordings that are best digested as a whole, rather than as a collection of singles. Oczy Mlody is impressively strong in this regard. Paradoxically, however, the individual parts that make up the album feel less focused. There are a few songs that emerge from the experience, but these are surrounded by floating ambient sound experiments, fuzzed-out jams, and spaghetti-western guitar themes.
Although some critics have taken exception to the album’s lack of clear boundaries, my increased interest in instrumental music and soundtracks may have enriched my appreciation of Oczy Mlody. It doesn’t feature the standout melodies of some of their earlier works, but in terms of texture and flow, it’s still quite convincing. At the same time, although it seems that the band is focusing more in being weird than making a clear statement, there does seem to be a coherent narrative that lies beyond the songwriting upon which they built their image.
In her early years, I had quite a bit of fun shaping P’s musical experiences. Since she has been driving to elementary school with her mother, however, my musical influence has diminished. Its interesting, however, to see how that early musical environment resonates with how she hears music today. I recently had the title track from Dawes’ All Your Favorite Bandsplaying and when the piano introduction came on she immediately recalled how much she liked the song because she used to listen to it "when she was a baby."
I did not have the heart to tell her that there is no way that it could be true. I got the album at the beginning of this year in my Christmas Booty, so she most likely had never heard the song before January, and almost certainly not in a way that she would remember from her infancy.
Calendrical realities aside, I understand where she is coming from. There is something immediately familiar about the song. In a perfect world, it would be played at every High School graduation. What she did, I think, was catch on to one of the many magical aspects of Dawes. No matter how old or how young you are, they create instant nostalgia in the best possible way. It’s not a crafted, manufactured nostalgia like M83 or Tame Impala employ, but an essential earnestness that they share with many classic song-driven bands. Granted, they don’t really sound like Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, or the Beatles, but they distill their best aspects into a distinctive reinterpretation.
The devoted Dawes fan will notice that I am a little behind the curve by getting into All Your Favorite Bands at the beginning of 2017. Stories Don’t End was my 2014 Album of the Year, and it seems that I should be eager to follow it up, but fear of disappointment made me apprehensive. Dawes consistently stands out, however, by being ingenious wordsmiths. Taylor Goldsmith’s penchant for eloquently addressing the everyday mundane had made him my favorite lyricist, hands down. He often crafts lines that seem like the throwaway meanderings of his stream of consciousness, but their underlying continuity begs the dedicated listener to question the importance of every verse. Check out the subtle Heideggerianisms in Right on Time.
As much as I like to point out Dawes’ lyric strengths, All Your Favorite Bands also contains many outstanding instrumental moments, perhaps in a more noticeable way than its predecessor. In several instances, extended guitar solos and memorable instrumental riffs do more than just service the songs - they expand them. I Can’t Think About it Now, in particular, contains a passionately delivered guitar solo that stands apart from the rest of the song, giving it a sense of departure and return.
Despite being a great album, however, All Your Favorite Bands probably won’t end up as the 2017 album of the year. Aside from having a few other recordings that resonate with me more strongly, there is the sense that some forced moments lurk in the album’s recesses. This is only an impression, however, and although it will probably be enough to pull it down from that top slot, it has very little impact on the overall album. The strengths of All Your Favorite Bands far outshine these moments, making the overall experience very rewarding.
Given its humble new-agey album art and inscrutable title, I would have never given Crying’s Beyond the Fleeting Gales a second thought if not for one particularly intriguing review that praised its joyous complexity. When the album showed up in my Christmas booty, it immediately impressed me, especially from a performance standpoint. It had hyperkinetic drums and female vocals that threw shades of 90s loungers The Cardigans. I liked the pop-metal synthesizer and guitar interplay. They keyboardist in particular seemed to have incredible chops that he channeled through vintage digital synthesizer sounds to paint an exuberant 80s feel throughout the entire album.
All this probably would have been enough for Beyond the Fleeting Gales to be an early 2017 favorite. After doing some research, however, I concluded that my interpretation of what Crying was up to was completely wrong, and that a deeper read of their work was in order.
I knew early on that Crying was considered a “chiptune” project, but I was blissfully unaware of what that meant. This designation specifically derives from their use of a modded Game Boy as an 8-bit sequencer for all of their synthesizer sounds. I admit that I felt a twinge of disappointment as I let go of the image of a fleet-fingered Wakeman protégé knocking out those arpeggios on a Juno, but the more I thought about it, the cooler it became.
Let’s start from the very simple fact that the Game Boy is in no way designed to be used as a sequencer. It's a video game system, and a rudimentary one by today’s standards, so I find it pretty impressive that Crying uses it to such great effect. Guitarist/songwriter Ryan Galloway has tamed the unique sounding potential of the Game Boy and used it as a distinctive compositional tool that shapes the essence of what Crying does. Stripped of guitars, vocals, and drums, the synthesized aspects of Beyond the Fleeting Gales would not sound out of place on a Super Mario Brothers level. Its essentially rocked-out video game music, which gives rise to the album’s generally triumphant tone.
But the role of the Game Boy in Crying’s unique identity goes beyond the system’s musical affordances. As its primary use is as a gaming system, it is reasonable to surmise that video game music is a fundamental influence on the band’s overall musical concept. This assumption sheds some light on several other curious aspects of Crying’s image. For example, the band’s vibrant prog-pop aesthetic doesn’t seem to jibe with its ethereal, often playful packaging. The album art makes more sense, however, in the context of classic fantasy games. In fact, at first glance, the libretto could pass as a Legend of Zelda instruction manual.
Following along in the libretto reveals another possible layer to this influence. Although the melodies on Beyond the Fleeting Gales are compelling, the vocal performances are somewhat unassuming and are readily overshadowed by the Crying’s compelling instrumentalism. Its easy to overlook the lyrics. A close read, however, reveals a succession of descriptive and surreal narratives that very well could be the story of an adventurer traveling through an imaginative platforming video game escapade.
Although I loved the idea of a band that purposefully collapsed the guitar histrionics of Neal Schon with the energy of 99 Luftballoons, I sense that these are my personal interpretations more than Crying’s intentions. Beyond the Fleeting Gales might be less about capturing musical nostalgia than reinterpreting the 8-bit gaming experience. This grants the album a genuine sense of exploration, and gives Crying a refreshing freedom that reminds me of the local bands in the 90s Dallas scene. Unlike those bands, however, Crying is not bound by any adherence to what is mainstream. They instead seem to be taking quite a bit of personal satisfaction in using their unique background as a reservoir of inspiration to push their own musical boundaries.
A month ago, the first day of school came and, despite having a good feeling about what will be happening in my bands during the coming semester, I couldn’t say that I was particularly happy about it. I had a wonderful couple of weeks at home with my family and getting used to leaving them behind every day in the midst of the usual morning stress was not appealing. As is often the way with semester preparations, we had two days of staff development to gear up before the students would arrive. On the second day of this scheduled inservice, we got a reprieve. Snow began to fall and my new district, being small and relatively remote, fortunately understands that many of its teachers drive in from other places. It was decided that we would leave early.
So I got a brief extension on my vacation. Austin almost always had more ice than snow, which can certainly shut down a school. It isn’t, however, really all that fun. Up here in North Texas you have the potential to get real snow - the kind that dances across the road rather than pelts the windshield. I was excited about watching P play in the light layer of white powder that was accumulating on the road when I got home.
Snow was swirling across the road like sands across dunes and Anna Meredith’s Varmints, a selection from my Christmas booty, was pulsing strongly, reflecting the white ripples as they cascaded across the blacktop. I put the album on my wishlist last year during my search for a follow-up to Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s astoundingly good EARS. Meredith’s interdisciplinary status as a composer for the BBC and a synth-pop songwriter seemed to put her in the position to fill that void in 2017.
Stylistically, however, the two are apples and oranges. Varmints has an extroverted flourish that is more theatrical when compared to the cerebral atmospheres of EARS. Like many Ableton-savvy composers, Meredith likes to vary a theme, particularly through rhythmic displacement. Take, for example, the disorienting entry of the backbeat of Nautilus. For four full minutes, the listener is allowed to think that the riff is on the beat, only to find that it is actually on the upbeat, resulting in a perceptual shift of the entire landscape. This kind of rhythmic slight-of-hand shows up several times throughout Varmints and it never seems to get old. It also allows the album to consistently tread the common zone between between layered songwriting and complex composition.
The distinction between these two extremes is often blurry. Meredith’s experience as a soundtrack composer grants the even the songs that are geared towards accessibility with a heaping tablespoon full of intricacy. She will often use intentional dissonance, using chords that don’t seem to work until after they have passed. Melodically, however, she keeps things light, bringing to mind Neko Case’s contributions to the New Pornographers. As a whole, however, Meredith’s often thunderous rave-inspired beats make Varmints a unique beast, indeed.
It turned out that Denton did not much snow, but it was enough. P got home and went directly outside with her mother to throw snow at each other. EJ, on the other hand, is not convinced that footwear is so great yet, so I stayed inside with her. When they came in, she told me that P will “always remember this,” and I was really glad that I was there to see it. It was a heart-warming way to spend the last cold day of our vacation.
Growing up is tricky, and I am not just talking about the time in and around those tender teenage years. Growing up continues well into adulthood, and requires no small amount of reflection and self-forgiveness. For songwriters with long careers, reconciling the successes of the past with the perspective of personal history can be a challenge, especially when those perspectives change with maturity. Weezer, a band whose defining material captured a unique brand of nerdy slackerishness, has wrestled with expressing their adulthood for decades.
Despite gleaning moments of brilliance arising from this struggle, I had effectively given up on the band until last year, when the Weezer [white] album broke my moratorium on their albums and ended up making my 2015 top 10. It success caused me to reconsider my pass on its predecessor, 2014’s Everything Will Be Alright in the End, which is, in some ways, even more successful because it shows the band finally singing in their grown-up voice
I should state that I became a Weezer fan reluctantly. I did not get them at all when Weezer [blue] was released, at least not initially. They won me over, however, and I followed them unquestioningly for nearly a decade after. Say it Ain’t So, with it’s unbelievably cathartic bridge, ended up being the model Weezer song.
There came a time, however, that I thought my jag with Weezer had come to an end. In 2005, they released Make Believe, and it seemed to me so crushingly cliche and formulaic that it reframed what I liked about their work in the worst possible way. It was as if Rivers Cuomo had sprayed midi-chlorians all over his entire back catalog. Everything Will Be Alright in the End, however, seems much more like the actual sequel to Weezer [blue]. It is Weezer’s The Force Awakens, acknowledging all that has transpired since A New Hope and, despite having some flaws, recaptures much of its original excitement.
Listening with an open ear reveals that Everything Will Be Alright in the End has a lot of common ground with Weezer’s pre-00s work. While they can never reclaim the slackery innocence of those early releases, there is a carefree sense to the album that stands in its stead. This untroubled environment sets the stage for Rivers to essentially acknowledge the successes and failures that he and the band have experienced. Although its not my favorite track on the album, Back to the Shack serves as the album’s mission statement, in which he rededicates himself to the things that once defined him.
The big difference here in my mind is that Rivers, as Weezer’s voice, is airing insecurities rather than making clever social observations at his own expense. This is a welcome shift.
Another track that really speaks to me personally isFoolish Father. In addition to being phenomenally tuneful and epic, it also feels like an significant conceptual inversion from Say It Ain’t So. Where once Rivers was being pretty explicit with where he laid the blame in his strained relationship with his father, here he expresses a bit more sympathetic position. Foolish Father suggests that the tensions that exist between a father and daughter stem more from the father's personal issues than lack of his love. The refrain is particularly gut-wrenching, as the characteristically cynical Rivers ends on a positive note, belting out the album’s optimistic title with a youthful gang-choir for impact.
Being a father myself and sometimes painfully watching my own flaws play out on my kids, I really connect with this song. Although my relationship with my kids is in no way strained right now, I don’t expect to end up being a perfect parent. I will probably go through times when we are at odds, but I sincerely hope that both P and EJ grow up knowing that any mistakes I made are in no way a reflection on either of them. Or their little brother, for that matter.
You read that right. If you made it this far into this post, you get the official treat: we are pregnant with a third and we are very, very excited We are, however, a bit nervous about the stress of having two littles only 18 months apart, a stress that could have repercussions in my interactions with the girls. I probably won't make it through the whole thing without doing something foolish, so I hope I have taught them enough forgiveness and understanding for them to realize that despite my shortcomings, I love them both dearly.
