Tastes just like coca cola and impending mediocrity

The Kinks
Lola Versus Powerman …
(Pye)
Originally released: 1970

One of the best things the Beatles ever did was break up. The individual members did plenty to disgrace the stone after that, of course, but they still have the nearly untouched perfection of the ’60s; the Stones would be much easier to defend if Exile on Main Street was their Let it Be.

The Kinks never reached the heights of either of their British Invasion compatriots, but they sure did teach them a thing or two about depths. Spurred on by the increasingly acrimonious relationship of brothers/lead songwriters Ray and Dave Davies and a very unfortunate turn towards the easier-to-swallow, sometimes downright loungy side of melodious rock, the vast majority of their recorded output post-1970 is almost unlistenable, particularly if you have any experience with the clever and effortlessly catchy singles they filled the ’60s with.

The 1970 more-or-less concept album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, is pretty much the signpost for the downturn. A fly-over of the band’s thoughts on the music industry they were by then thoroughly entrenched in, it’s the last overall good Kinks album, and as much a preservation of the pop craftsmanship and hazy melancholy that pervades their ’60s classics as a stark vision of the schmaltz and wankery that was to come.

That tension is summed up more or less perfectly in “A Long Way From Home,” a slow little piano-and-guitar ballad that typifies much of the ambivalence—or, really, barely muted disgust—Ray and Dave have towards the rock industry. It is a slow, sad track that drifts into treacle thanks to Ray’s growing mawkishness. It’s not hard to picture the Kinks of Village Green playing it more subtly melancholic, nor the Kinks of Preservation drowning its basic honesty with sentiment.

They hew much closer to their ideal cloudy but poignant grudging acceptance of change on “This Time Tomorrow,” where Ray’s titular refrain seems as much a hopeful encouragement as a depressed realization that today will be gone soon enough. Dave gets his own chance at a similar sentiment in the his commiserative “Strangers,” which basically finds hope and brotherhood under the ceaseless pressure of life’s unforgiving boot heel. Both of these songs walk a fine line between pity and exultation at being faced with an inevitability, and they’re two of the finer songs in a canon that is impressively full of sublimely traipsing around that territory.

The rest is a mixed bag. The two big hits are a wryly fun number that has to be one of the top-two songs about hanging out with a transvestite (“Lola”) and a pumped-up bit of schmaltz that sounds like the band trying to rip off the easy mood of the former (“Apeman”). Duelling numbers about how shitty music industry people really are (Ray’s “Top of the Pops” and Dave’s “Rats”) are catchy enough with being sticky, and are more self-serving than particularly poignant. That would, unfortunately, become something of a tendency for the Kinks on their subsequent albums.

Beach House's Teen Dream

1. Beach House – Teen Dream

Victoria Legrand’s voice would bleed emotion even without the grandiose-in-scope-but-understated-in-execution space that she and Alex Scally create on Teen Dream. Combined, they’re a force that’s devastating, no matter which particular way they’re trying to take you. Teen Dream is at times about loss, at times about love, at times about some haunting and gorgeous space in between, but it is first and foremost an album of epic and unrestrained feeling—not so unlike being a teenager, where the freshness of experience gives everything an overwhelming power.

2. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today

The reason Ariel Pink’s brand of pop deconstruction works where so many others sound laborious is because he manages to fulfill all your expectations even as he’s subverting them. Before Today is engrossing well before you realize what’s going on, and it gets eight miles deep without ever losing sight of its shimmering surface.

3. LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening

Whether it’s a song about the benefits of different perspectives (“Pow Pow”) or just James Murphy’s uncanny ability to infuse a dance anthem with hard-won but ecstatic wisdom (“All I Want”), This is Happening proved that the DFA genius still hasn’t lost his edge—or at least has done it in the most interesting, elated way possible.

4. Big Boi – Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty

Conventional wisdom was that Antwan Patton—whatever he wants you to call him—was the propulsive, street-ready ying to André Benjamin’s loopy and esoteric yang, but Big Boi delivered some of the finest work of his already sterling career by tromping all over the map in true Outkast style. The production is every bit as layered and expansive as the duo’s best work, and is pushed into a whole other level by a full-on lyrical assault from Patton, who uses enough in-and-out wordplay and rhythmic bravado to put an entire poetry anthology to shame.

5. Caribou – Swim

Dan Snaith managed to expand both his emotional and sonic palettes considerably on Swim, and he hardly limited his scope before. Swim can seem melancholy, celebratory, mopey and effusive in one phrase, and in its entirety is some mercurial, elusive thing that’s capable of swallowing you whole even as it rushes away from what you’ve come to expect.

15 great songs from bands that didn’t make the top 5 (and one from late 2009 that I didn’t hear in time for last year)
“Summer Holiday” – Wild Nothing
“Feel It” – Pop Winds
“New Raincoat” – Jom Comyn
“Wrinklecarver” – Gobble Gobble
“Suffering Season” – Woods
“Fuck You!” -  Cee-Lo Green
“Bhang Bhang, I’m a Burnout” – Dum Dum Girls
“The King of Spain” – The Tallest Man on Earth
“Got Ideas,” Sans AIDS
“I Need a Dollar” – Aloe Blacc
“Bloodbuzz Ohio” – The National
“Art Museums and Tourist Traps” The Provincial Archive
“Text Exit,” Bronze Leaf
“Hans Kruger,” Kumon Plaza
“Year’s Not Long,” Male Bonding

2009 Edition: “Ghetto Lungs, GET ALONG NOW,” Brazilian Money

I don’t think we need to be coy about the fact that Edmonton is a hard place to live, especially if you’re an artist: attention to our distant outpost is fleeting, and though some talented folks manage to break through, many more will be overlooked, denied the opportunities that greets similarily talented artists in larger centres. This lack of attention grants a certain freedom that shouldn’t be overlooked, but it will forever be a struggle to make a wider impression (never mind a living) from Edmonton. Still, the best way to serve a scene like ours is to hold it to our highest standards. That means being effusive with praise when something meets them, but also (and maybe especially) holding them to task when they don’t.

I will grant this might read as self-justification, but so be it. The only criticism that has ever stung me was when it was suggested that I didn’t care about the city, didn’t support it enough. I want the best for this city—something, ironically, I feel acutely as I’m getting prepared to leave it—and one never, ever accomplishes that by settling for good enough.

Put another way, though, maybe this whole farewell should read thusly: please take care of my city while I’m gone.

Peter Sagar, on one of his rare trips out of Riverdale.

To call Peter Sagar unflappable seems like a crushing understatement: the kid has the demeanour of someone who could be watching the entire Godzilla pantheon in a battle royale on Whyte Ave and barely be troubled enough to make sure his tea doesn’t spill. Combined with a penchant for shaggy unkemptness and an ear for fuzzy pop hooks that would put Doug Martsch to shame—evidenced both as a member of Outdoor Miners and in Sans AIDS, the lo-fi two-piece in which he is the driving (or at least most present) force—it gives him the aura of a ’90s college kid who got detoured on his way to buy the newest Pavement album and has just decided to roll with it.

“I listen to ’90s rap all day every day. I used to listen to other stuff too, obviously,” he shrugs. “I just really like the era. It’s so … lazy.”

Lazy would seem to be the dominant theme of most of his output to date, although it’s more of a lyrical mood than an actual listening experience. As evidenced as much by the quantity of his output—this year alone, he’s had one seven-inch with each band as well as a split tape with Lake Country and now the solo tape Loaners—as much as its quality, he is not lackadaisical so much as capable of filtering the slacker ethos through jagged and deceptively minimal pop music. He’s a fuzzed-out poet of the hanging-out-on-the-couch set.

“My roommate was actually making fun of me, because I think three of the songs [on Loaners] are about me hanging out at home. That’s basically all I do, is hang out at home with my roommates,” he explains nonchalantly. “I guess you write about what you know, and it’s hard leaving Riverdale. There’s a hill and the bus only comes every half an hour.”

Grey Matter, Wool on Wolves’ shockingly mature debut, opens with twangy guitar, obviously affected, and quickly joined by piano keys. Moments later a distant glockenspiel makes itself heard, then one voice, then a rush of harmonizing and a lazy harmonica spreading out over the words. At some point an easily strummed acoustic guitar and an energetic drum fill sneak into the mix as well. By the time you get to the end, instruments are cascading over one another, trading off dominant spaces but weaving together a melody of irresistible drive.

As an introduction to the album and the world, it perfectly establishes what the band is capable of doing. Not just a driving folk-pop song that expands from its simple core to encompass a rustic symphony’s worth of sounds, it is also a testament to their instrumental chameleon tendencies, their collaborative process and finally their comfort with each other, an ability to play off one another’s energy that seems almost in-born. How fitting, then, that the song is called “Thick as Thieves.”

Truthfully, there are few better ways to describe the fivesome, made up of singer/guitarist Thomas Reikie, drummer Kevin George, pianist Eric Leydon, guitarist Gordon Brasnett and bassist Brody Irvine. Friends long before they ever started jamming together, it’s rather indicative of their collaborative nature that those traditional band labels don’t actually mean much. They’re really more starting points than anything, the instruments that might most regularly be found in their hands, but hardly capturing the band’s full breadth: they trade off with an almost manic regularity, and as “Thick as Thieves” demonstrates, they’re capable of throwing just about any instrument you can think of at a song to make it work.

“There are songs where Brodie’s got to put down the violin and pick up a bass, and Gord’s got to put down drum sticks and pick up a lap steel and Kev’s gotta put down the banjo and pick up drum sticks and Eric’s gotta pick up a trumpet while he’s playing keys,” explains Reikie with a slightly admiring tone. “I somehow manage to sneak out of it, but I think all of us are just learning how to do that and learning about how and where to add texture.”

Though it’s a technique that pays obvious dividends on Grey Matter—something to which the band credits Nik Kozub’s assured production—it was never exactly a conscious choice on their part.

Rather, it was simply a matter of them slowly discovering that they wanted more from their songs, and then figuring out how to add it. It’s a fairly freewheeling way to build a band’s sound, but then feeling comfortable enough to try new things is an essential ingredient in the band’s ethos: when they started out, after all, they weren’t a traditionally organized band but just a group of friends with the time and inclination to jam.

“A lot of playing multiple instruments—playing any instruments, really—was born out of necessity,” explains Irvine.

“I think when it all started we had four guitar players and a piano player,” adds Leydon.
“Yeah, Kev basically learned drums for the band,” picks up Irvine, in a give-and-take way that could stand in for much of the band’s interaction.

“Yeah, I learned the drums playing the songs,” chimes in George. “Basically, I had won some money at the casino and bought a set of drums two or three months before we started jamming. So, in their minds, they knew I had a drum kit … “

“Therefore he was the drummer,” interjects Reike, to a room-wide chuckle.
“That’s how it worked,” finishes George. “I had nights of sweating nervousness, but I think the best way to learn an instrument is playing in the room with other people, because you learn how it fits in with the band.”

Make no mistake, fitting in together is of the utmost importance for the fivesome, and they take it far beyond the stage or the jam space. For the past year, the entire band save for Reike has been living together in the same house, and though the phrase “band house” should conjure up images of something slightly more organized than a Bosch triptych, they have managed to keep things smoothly put-together, both physically and psychologically.

For the band, it not only gives them an obvious practice space, but also has removed almost any physical barrier to spur-of-the-moment songcraft. The result, as evidenced on Grey Matter, seems to be songs that can expand and contract assuredly, as they’ve already been taken through the process enough times that the band has them pretty nailed down.

“Having the luxury of pulling someone off the couch and get them to come hammer out parts is really nice,” explains Brasnett. “It helps mature things a lot faster, I think, than most bands can manage.”
“As soon as the four of these guys moved in together, the writing process just completely flipped on its head,” concurs Reike. “They were coming to me with almost complete songs saying, ‘Can you put lyrics to this?’ It’s been incredibly freeing.”

And its effects are still being felt. Truthfully, much of the base of Grey Matter was written while Reike was on an exchange to Quebec and in the semester after he returned, where he admits he had less focus on his grades than on putting together lyrics—”It was really conducive to writing,” he admits wryly, “not necessarily for graduating, but for writing.”

From stripped-down acoustic numbers that he and Irvine used to play in coffee shops and at open mics, though, the songs on Grey Matter have grown into productions as expansive and atmospheric as a prairie field at twilight while losing none of their emotional core.

“The Distance Between Us” is a slow strummer that gradually builds into wide-eyed crusher whose internal space seems as wide as the physical space Reike is trying to overcome in his heartfelt lyrics. “Red Roses” thumps with drums that almost sound electric, and its slow melange of affected instruments mirror the punishing pain of Reike’s voice, creating an effect akin to following a funeral procession down a dirt road. Album closer “Reap and Sow” ends with an extended period of mournful horns and a chorus repeating “You reap what / reap what you have sown” like it’s somewhere between a benediction and a curse.

The final effect of the album is something that hits harder in the heart strings than in the head to which the title refers, but the band admits that they’re less concerned with the specific effect of the album than the fact it has an effect on someone. It is obvious that for them the entire process is a slow tightening of the ties that bind, and their biggest concern once the process is over seems to be finding people who want to be knotted up with them, whatever brings them to that conclusion.

“There was this really great interview with Jeff Tweedy, where he said, ‘When you release a song, it’s not yours anymore. Whoever listens to it, it belongs to them,’” explains Reike. “I think that really meant a lot to all of us, insofar as we’re not trying to make somebody feel anything in particular, we just hope they feel something, they take something away from it.”

Beck's Mutations

Conventional wisdom is that it was 2002′s Sea Change that saw Beck, that ultimate chameleon ironist, finally shake off his posturing and embrace sincerity. A better way to look at Sea Change, though, is the album where Beck didn’t worry about dressing up his bouts of sincere emotion with his usual penchant for genre-hopping, clever side-stepping and esoteric arrangement. His real first step toward the nakedly emotional was on 1998′s far superior Mutations, a left-turn follow-up to the smash hit Odelay that, with the hyper-sexed funk of Midnite Vultures, represents not only the man’s creative high point, but arguably some of the best music to come out of the ’90s.
At least part of the reason for that was how well Beck managed to tap into the zeitgeist. Grunge and the slacker college bands are maybe more directly tied to the overall mood, but few were better than the Loser at crystallizing the sarcastic distance that defined most of youth culture and spitting it out into a clean but very weird and expansive pop structure. He was, in a sense, casting crooked glances at almost every genre of popular music that had come before, puncturing their serious posturing by effortlessly making songs in their vein, like every song was a shrug and a “What’s the big deal?” while still just involved enough to suggest the answer. That’s played to perfection on Mutations with “Tropicalia,” an easy throwback to the Brazilian genre of the same name that nevertheless also manages to fit the slightly-more-serious mood of the rest of the album.

That move, actually suggesting he might be serious, was a pretty big deal—Dylan going electric, really, although obviously his fans were much less precious about it. It got less attention here, though, because it was still hidden, buried into his more usual trickery. But on a song like “Nobody’s Fault But My Own” with its slow guitar and wide, droning backgrounds, to say nothing of Beck’s broke-down delivery and self-reproaching lines like “And on the day you said it’s true / Some love holds, some gets used,” it’s pretty hard to find some kind of wink. It is a simple sad bastard dirge with just enough on the edges to suggest it’s self-aware, which kills precisely none of the effect. (Stack it up against anything on Sea Change and you’ll see where the directness holds that album back.) “Bottle of Blues” bounces along a bit more, and is similarily futzing with classic blues structure, but its overall sense of weariness is pretty hard to shake, with Beck’s usually esoteric wordplay shading strongly into worn-out depression.

To be sure, there are still plenty of the shrugged-off gems that Beck made his living on, even if they play off genres normally a bit less energetic than he’s capable of (the tweaked country of “Canceled Check,” say). But on Mutations Beck proved that he could do emotion without losing any of his cleverness, and it’s one of his finest albums for it.

Even for him, though, the response to Antichrist—out in short order on a typically loaded Criterion release—was vociferous and forceful. The combination of graphic scenes—including Willem Dafoe ejaculating blood and a very close-up view of Charlotte Gainsbourg trimming off her clitoris with tin snips—and what many critics charged was a nasty misogynist streak will do that, I suppose.

There’s no getting around the disgust factor—which you could argue was gratuitous if that wasn’t exactly the point—but the charges of misogyny, at least, seem a little bit pedantic. That charge is one that’s dogged Von Trier repeatedly through his career, and Antichrist would seem to be the perfect target: after the death of their child while they’re having sex, Dafoe and Gainsbourg (who are never named in the film) retreat to a remote mountain cabin, actually called “Eden,” where he hopes to treat her with psychotherapy. She slowly seems to be getting better, or at least Dafoe thinks until he finds the remains of a thesis on gynocide she was writing in the cabin before.

Filled with pictures cut from the Malleus Maleficarum and slowly-degraded scribbling that suggests Gainsbourg has gone from criticizing medieval misogyny to self-identifying as wicked and evil, it’s this discovery that really prompts the shit to hit the fan, as it were, and it’s not long before Dafoe has his balls smashed with the blunt side of a hatchet and gets a sharpening wheel screwed into his calf.

A simple reading could find a lot of dislike of women here, but this is Von Trier we’re dealing with, and he seems more to be throwing various instances of our misogynist tendencies in our face than endorsing them. The overt religious imagery is one pretty strong clue, I think, but there’s a lot going on here: just one example is that Von Trier has said he set out to make a horror film, and I think you could also read Gainsbourg as a kind of up-ending of the typical slasher, in the sense that she’s both initially easy to identify with and a woman (has there ever been a female killer in a horror movie?). And Dafoe’s character, a patronizing therapist who only seems able to analyze his wife, not empathize with her, hardly gets a ringing endorsement.

Beyond shock value, though, Antichrist is also frequently beautiful, with plenty of images that will linger as long as the questions Von Trier hammers away at will. The two most striking are probably a Bosch-style tableau of hands emerging from a tree trunk and a highly unsettling scene with a self-disemboweling fox who utters what might be the ideal epitaph for Von Trier’s career goals: “Chaos Reigns.”

“I see angst as sort of potential energy, and you can get it out in a bunch of different ways,” explains Werb over the phone from New York, where the band made a stop for CMJ. “You can dance it out, or do the punk-rock delivery that’s kind of been our bread and butter up to this point, or whatever. They’re different, but they’re sparked by that same potentiality.”

That explains the link, although even Werb admits that music and lyrics tend to come from pretty different places. Although he has noticed that the more he writes the more his lyrics tend to get infected by the infectious exultation of dance.

“For better or for worse, I tend to need to write lyrics when I’m going through bullshit with partners,” he admits with a kind of knowing chuckle. “But that’s changing, actually: we’re starting work on our next album, which will probably be an EP, and it’s all going to be songs written about the perfect life, to contrast with the dark, angst-ridden stuff I’ve been writing up until now. Even I’m getting tired of hearing myself whine about girls.”

As one half of the Push Pins booking team, Frena was instrumental in the creation of the Hydeaway All Ages Art Space, as well as being responsible for countless other shows for Edmonton’s young up-and-comers and smaller travelling acts. GOBBLE FEST will be the third such night-long musical festival Levin has produced—along with Wyrd Fest and Wyrd Alberta—bringing together outre Edmonton bands and esoteric outsiders we might not otherwise get to see (in addition to his fine work on Weird Canada).

I’m singling this pair out, but in truth they are two of a small cadre of independent promoters that are the key to the future of Edmonton’s music scene. The major promoters, of course, ensure we can see those big touring acts everyone loves, but without the folks booking the halls, dives, basements and soon-to-be-shuttered illegal venues that give bands a chance to find their legs, the idea of local music wouldn’t even exist around here. And for that their reward is usually only getting to see a great show and making sure the space is clean after it.

These kinds of folks are the lifeblood of any scene, but their importance is acute here in Edmonton, with our relative lack of touring bands, strange melange of venues and general reticence to put locals on big bills. I am of the opinion that Edmonton music is on the cusp of a minor renaissance, and every single one of those bands wouldn’t be able to do the incredible stuff they’ve done and soon will do without the indie promoters.

Most of them realize this, of course, but all too often the audiences at the show ignore the people behind it. They do more than anyone to make sure we can have bands to call our own, though, so consider this a small bit of the greater recognition they unquestionably deserve.

As could probably be predicted, Gast uses Galella both as an interesting subject in his own right and as a cipher to talk about the huge industry of which Galella is more or less a spiritual godfather, though he is welcomely restrained in both his judgment and his methods. He weaves in those larger questions, getting perspectives on everyone from lawyers to fellow photographers—although, curiously, few actual celebrities—pulling us along while he recounts some of the highs and lows of Galella’s career and using them as test cases.

Unquestionably the most interesting one concerns Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, with whom Galella had an interesting relationship, to put it charitably. Galella seems almost slavishly devoted to her, even now: one person plainly points out that he was “stalking her with a camera,” and it feels less like a standard complaint against paparazzi than an even assessment of Galella’s tactics. For her part, Onassis only ever responded with scorn: she is the one who uttered the words that give the film its title to a secret service agent, and she eventually sued Galella and won a restraining order keeping him away from her and her kids. Yet, for all the interest it holds in explaining Gallella, it’s the one anecdote that doesn’t really have a relation to modern times, at least beyond the most abstract questions: this was an obsession, whereas the profession really does seem strangely impersonal for the new generation, however invasive it is for the stars.

Perhaps the moment most poignantly connected to our modern era comes near the end, when a young girl is toured through a showing of Galella’s photographs. Despite being a photographic galaxy of international stars—Jackie O, of course, but also Taylor and Burton, Brigitte Bardot and many other big names—the young girl hardly recognizes any of them, even when given their names. And so perhaps Galella was wrong to be so personally invested in his work: fame, after all, is fleeting, and so, too, is the prestige—if you can even call it that—of documenting it.