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Most Springsteen albums are generally musical, positive, epic, and possess lyrics that are so detailed that the listener becomes immersed in Springsteen’s nostalgic but romantic tales of growing up in blue collar America. Nebraska, is different. Nebraska, is a set of songs Springsteen recorded as demos and, as legend has it, carried them around in a back pocket of a worn pair of jeans until he was convinced that the tracks sounded better without the E-Street band. The result is an album that tells tragic stories of blue collar characters in a United States that is about to enter the Reagan era.

To match the lyrics, is a low-fi production recorded by Springsteen alone, in a room, with a four-track machine. Not only is this unplugged recording style an important platform for lo-fi indie albums of the 90′s, but the medium echos Spingsteen’s themes of despair and hopelessness and makes the perfect backdrop for his story telling.

This is an album for the dark.

Bruce Springsteen – Highway Patrolman

Noah Lennox of Panda Bear and Animal Collective fame was nice enough to answer a couple questions for us by email. Below the fold, he touches on a new family life in Lisbon, the success of Person Pitch, and his thoughts on the music industry. Josh wrote an introductory post here. Thanks, Noah!

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As the year winds down, critics have begun compiling their, “Best of 2007″ lists. On the “top albums” lists, one is going to find Panda Bear’s (aka Noah Lennox’s) Person Pitch come up frequently.

On the inside cover of Person Pitch is a list of “thank you’s” that includes a number of artists. The top two are, Basic Channel and Luomo, minimal techno artists. This is not surprising considering Person Pitch is a sampled album. In basic structure, it’s not that different from what one may find on a minimal techno record, but the rub is in the samples Panda Bear has chosen. Rather then blips and bleeps, one is going to find claps, voices from a choir, a roller coaster, someone crying, an owl, guitars, Panda Bear’s vocals, which sound eerily similar to Brian Wilson’s, and interestingly enough, sounds and instruments that are reminiscent of those used in Pet Sounds (see Bros and Ponytail).

One thing this decade will be remembered for is the way artists are beginning to use digital technology to do new and different things with samples. Girl Talk and A-trak are examples of this, so are Panda Bear and Animal Collective, though in a completely different light. Girl Talk and A-trak use them to make the ultimate mix-tape. Panda Bear uses samples to convert into an album his appreciation of different experiences and influences. Person Pitch is not just a beautiful record, its also a personal statement about being an artist and how one should conduct himself as such.

“get your head out from those mags
and websites who try to
shape your style
take a risk just for yourself
and wade into the deep end of the ocean”

Paw Tracks

My Space

Pitchfork did it so we don’t have to.

One of my first loves in music. Funny to think how much the world has changed in the last 10-15 years. Perhaps most of you are too young to realize, but until the mid 90′s it was close to impossible to get any of their recordings at any place in the world but the UK, and I don’t even mean an official release, it could be a homemade cassete, anything. Haha, I don’t think at that time a regular kid could ever imagine the Internet, downloads and all these things that seem to be inside our DNA nowadays.

So, I remember back in 1995 when I finally got my first album, a CD from Spacemen 3. It was in NYC, in a small basement store at the East Village. It was one of those magical music related experiences, finding something I was about to give up. That store was the best I had seen thus far. They had all official releases of them and pretty much any other band you can think of, plus a lot of bootlegs. That’s another thing, it was much harder less than 15 years ago. Today if you love a band you can download it. In the recent past you first needed to find a place that had it for sale, then you needed to have the money to buy it. I didn’t have the money. In the end I only bought this one. I had just got some others about 2 years later when in Europe, but man, this was one of the very few albums that I literally knew entirely. The CD player was always on repeat. Insane. Then, a bit later, I started to judge the quality of record stores by the amount of different Spacemen 3 titles they were selling. Trust me, at the end of the 20th century this kind of filter used to make sense. If a store was selling an album by a cult band from some other place on the globe, that was a fucking great store. It was a huge world. The local bands were just that, local. You or your friends needed to travel to different countries, dive into their respective scenes, and then come back home to show what you got, like if it was a trophy. Are you following me? You know those old, old, photos of animals hunted? It was close. And the cults used to begin that way. And the word cult was proper, in the sense of concentration. Not from my time, but as an illustration, Bowie goes to live in Berlin and his music gets intoxicated by the place. Before the Internet, before traveling becomes so affordable, even if you were already a really well established artist, to go and live in another place, and mind you Berlin is really close to London, could make deep turns to the way you deal with things. The cultural shock we watch in “Lost in Translation” was so much deeper and used to happen in any direction, not only very distant locations. Spacemen 3 was also my introduction to older bands like Suicide, The 13th Floor Elevators and The Red Krayola. They even had an album titled “Taking Drugs to Make Music to Taking Drugs to”.  That was seduction to a kid willing to know more, willing to know better. They were full of references – intelligent ones. They made a live record, “Dreamweapon”, consisting of 45 minutes of distorted guitars. Fuck, a cool band didn’t use to make those kind of things back then. Hypnotic. Extreme. The vocals are so slack. Slow ambiances. I’m writing all this because after 5 years or so I just listened to this album again. You know, kinda like that old girlfriend you will always love but life moves on and relationships aren’t supposed to last, but sometimes, sometimes you two see each other and get together and everything is right and makes total sense. Listen up.

Things’ll Never Be the Same

Take Me to the Other Side

Transparent Radiation (Flashback)

Matthew Cooper aka Eluvium was kind enough to answer a few questions for us via e-mail. Here, you can find his thoughts on file sharing, some book, movie, and album recommendations, as well as a bit of insight into Eluvium’s latest LP, Copia.

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Throughout one’s daily routines, one is faced with moments that test one’s nerves. For some, these moments surface during the morning commute, in the workplace, at home, while watching an intense movie, and in a countless number of other scenarios.

Matthew Cooper, under the moniker Eluvium, offers an aural antidote filled with rich soundscapes, deep textures, and at times sparse resonance. Eluvium’s latest LP, Copia, has the same depth and introversion that is the cornerstone of Eluvium’s discography, but here the guitar is abandoned for brass, a piano, an organ, and other strings. The change in instruments creates a shift in mood from Eluvium’s recent albums. Copia is more uplifting and feels, overall, more positive. If Talk Amongst the Trees is the sunset, then Copia is the sunrise. Its the innocence of the morning and a detox from the evening.

Eluvium – Prelude For Time Feelers

Purchase 

Local Philadelphia radio station, 88.5 WXPN has compiled their list of the 885 most important moments in music history. I’ve never been a huge fan of lists when ranking is based on nothing more then opinion, but the collection of historical music events does succeed in illuminating some of the most pivotal moments in music.

I’ve spent a few hours getting lost in some of the events and their consequences and I’m bound to come back a few more times and explore other events. In short its worth a gander. Oh and their pick for the most influential moment in music history: ’69 Woodstock.

WXPN’s List: http://www.xponentialmusic.org/blogs/885mmmm

Radiohead releases In Rainbows today. From my first couple of listens I can say the album is the sort of caliber that you would expect from Radiohead. Their album site seems to be down at the moment.

In Rainbows

Bela Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies is not for everyone. It is long, coming in at around two and a half hours (not too long considering his last movie is seven and a half hours in length). The average time of each shot is close to three minutes long. It is shot in black and white. There are no special effects or plot twists.

Yet Tarr’s style is mesmerizing and penetrating. It creates a dark, bleak world of relentless winters, muddy streets, and frightened citizens. The characters seem real. The black and white shots are sometimes dramatic, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes horrifying. I really enjoyed this film, but as I said, its not for everyone. I’ll provide the opening takes below as well as the song from the video.

Víg Mihály – Valuska