Saturday, July 19, 2008
Zack Attack Back
New Zack De La Rocha here. The angry not-so-young man and a drummer called Jon Theodore. It's stripped down down and pretty cool, but this may as well be new RATM. Not necessarily a bad thing.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
When in doubt, play track 4
Elvis Costello & The Imposters - Momofuku [2008]Elvis Costello is an imposing figure. According to some, his shadow over modern music is as significant as that cast by Bob Dylan. Admittedly, this was news to me. The hipsters haven’t embraced Costello like they have Dylan or Tom Waits. Why that is, it’s hard to say. Maybe it’s because he’s British and he hangs out with perennial sad case Paul McCartney. Or maybe it’s because he reminds the hipsters too much of themselves – skinny, literate, geeky glasses, encyclopedic knowledge of music history – except that he’s got the thing every hipster dreams of but doesn’t have: talent, fame, success. We like our musical geniuses to be tormented, depressed, alcoholic – dead, ideally. So the fact that a well adjusted suburban computer programmer can do it is a harsh reality check best avoided.
Costello is still doing it. Momofuku is a great album. It does that thing where it sounds familiar and yet confounds expectations. The joy is in these little surprises, like in opener “No Hiding Place”. At first, the song seems a jam, but little by little it reveals itself as a deliberately structured and superbly produced rock out. Then, “American Gangster Time” punches in with this raw punk riff, but by the time the chorus rolls around complete with Vox continental organ, you’ve realised the wheel’s been reinvented again.
What else can I say? To quote Costello himself, in an article for Vanity Fair that listed his favourite 500 albums: “How many times can you write "Superb," "Beautiful," "Stomping," or "Absolutely tangerine" before it loses all meaning? How many times do you need to read: "Masterpiece"? Or, better still "Masterpiece . . . ?".” Ok, this is no masterpiece. But the man’s point applies to those words, too. Who cares if you’re listening to a masterpiece or not when a track like “Go Away”, pumped through crappy earphones, can make you drum the air with invisible sticks as you walk home from work.
In the same article, Costello wrote: “When in doubt, play Track 4-it is usually the one you want.” Damn straight. Track 4 of Momofuku is called “Harry Worth”, and it’s absolutely tangerine. Head straight for track 4 and if it doesn’t knock your motherfucking socks off, feels vindicated in your Costello-apathy.
Costello is still doing it. Momofuku is a great album. It does that thing where it sounds familiar and yet confounds expectations. The joy is in these little surprises, like in opener “No Hiding Place”. At first, the song seems a jam, but little by little it reveals itself as a deliberately structured and superbly produced rock out. Then, “American Gangster Time” punches in with this raw punk riff, but by the time the chorus rolls around complete with Vox continental organ, you’ve realised the wheel’s been reinvented again.
What else can I say? To quote Costello himself, in an article for Vanity Fair that listed his favourite 500 albums: “How many times can you write "Superb," "Beautiful," "Stomping," or "Absolutely tangerine" before it loses all meaning? How many times do you need to read: "Masterpiece"? Or, better still "Masterpiece . . . ?".” Ok, this is no masterpiece. But the man’s point applies to those words, too. Who cares if you’re listening to a masterpiece or not when a track like “Go Away”, pumped through crappy earphones, can make you drum the air with invisible sticks as you walk home from work.
In the same article, Costello wrote: “When in doubt, play Track 4-it is usually the one you want.” Damn straight. Track 4 of Momofuku is called “Harry Worth”, and it’s absolutely tangerine. Head straight for track 4 and if it doesn’t knock your motherfucking socks off, feels vindicated in your Costello-apathy.
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