As today was the last day of school for me (holy crap, next year I'll be a SENIOR! Then after that I'll have to join the real world!), I figured I'd share one of my favorite summer albums. "Comfort Eagle" by CAKE is an awesome summer album. I bought it at the start of summer last year, and now it epitomizes everything that summer is: Warm, happy, carefree, fun, and lazy. Without further ado: 
Comfort Eagle is CAKE's fourth studio album. Released in 2001, it's spawned a few good singles, including the hit "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" that I think almost everyone has heard and that almost everyone should love. There are a number of excellent gems on this album, though, besides just the hit single, and I buying the full CD is well worth your money. One of CAKE's better releases, almost every song is catchy and features super-awesome lyrics full of metaphors and wordplay, courtesy of CAKE frontman John McCrea. McCrea's velvety voice shines through on all the tracks (except the instrumental "Arco Arena" of course) and I think the vocal performance is what endears me to CAKE the most (excellent lyrics and awesome bass lines are also big selling points). Whether McCrea is actually singing or sort of rapping/vocalizing makes no difference; he is talented enough to make even rap sound good.
The album opens with "Opera Singer". This is a good fun-in-the-sun summer song with pounding drum machine and sweet meandering guitar lines funky trumpet. There's nothing really special about the song, but it's fun nonetheless.
"Meanwhile, Rick James..." is the second track and is a melancholy song drowning in confusing metaphors and symbolisms. What the heck does "Fawn, Joe, and Tootsie are out on a wire/Lettuce-toothed junkies are full of desire" mean anyway? Not a big Rick James fan myself, I don't know any of his back story, but John McCrea claims to have written this song before ol' Ricky went crazy and became a druggie kidnapper and rapist. He seems to have predicted Ricky's future, then, because it mentions his drug addictions ("Swim in your kidney, kidney shaped pool/Scratching at the bottom for another clue") and his controversies with women pretty accurately.
"Shadow Stabbing" is an awesome song that embodies summer. It's light and bouncy but not quite "poppy". The funky guitar at the beginning is my favorite part, although the melody is pretty freakin' awesome too.
"Short Skirt/Long Jacket" is possibly CAKE's biggest hit, with contenders in "Rock 'N' Roll Lifestyle" and "The Distance". There's a good reason why it's a hit, though: Because it's freaking amazing. Full of wordplay and lists of absurd qualities that McCrea wants in his girl, this one is an instant classic. Great bass, nice overdriven guitar, and sweet trumpet make the music awesome; McCrea's awesome lyrics and light rap make the vocals amazing. My favorite lines are "I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity/Who uses a machete to cut the red tape/With fingernails that shine like justice/and a voice that is dark like tinted glass". Those lyrics are just so ridiculously hilarious that they get me every time. What the heck does justice look like? What does tinted glass sound like? And I can totally see this ideal girl hacking her way through rules and regulations without a care in the world, as if she was taking a machete to them. It's awesome.
The next few songs are pretty good. "Commissioning a Symphony in C" is pretty fun (funny thing is, it's not really in the key of C. The chorus is in C, but the verses and bridge modulate to F) but nothing special, and the instrumental "Arco Arena" is actually kind of boring, although it makes for some nice filler.
"Comfort Eagle" is a hard-rock Indian-influences song that's pretty sweet. The lyrics are lashing out against the music industry and comparing it to some trashy cheap religion that gives out trinkets in exchange for loyalty. It's pretty cool, and it's fun to sing along with the "Calling you DUDE!" parts.
The last four songs are all really nicely-built songs full of good lyrics. "Love You Madly" especially is a good song about wanting to love a girl without all the crap that comes with relationships like unreasonable commitments and commercialism-laced holidays. Other than that, none of the other songs are tremendously note-worthy.
Most of the songs on the album are just part of the wash and they're not specifically stand-out songs, but the particular "wash" of the Comfort Eagle album is set at a surprisingly high standard. None of the songs are weak, but few of them are particularly strong singles-worthy songs. CAKE is not about being amazing rockin' musicians that kick butt and take names every time they pick up their instruments, CAKE is about making good music and having fun. CAKE is the ultimate lounge band, and they show it. This is not music to perform covers of at a rock concert (with the exception of "Short Skirt/Long Jacket"), but it's excellent music to listen to when you're just hanging out or driving down the road. I don't know what qualities make a good "summer album" but this one had that label jump into my head from the first time I listened to it, and to me it feels like it fits that label perfectly.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Grab A Slice Of CAKE This Summer
Monday, February 16, 2009
Make Room, Weezer!
Bringing you yet another review of an emerging artist, the artist I'm spotlighting today is the band "Switches". They're a British band who has only been around long enough to release one EP and a full-length album. I'll review their album farther down the page, as part of the emerging-artist spotlight.
Switches play energetic powerpop with mixes of other, older genres laced throughout. They're not far removed from Weezer, although they turn the rock meter up a little bit higher than the Weez boys. Switches are very big fans of Weezer, though, drawing inspiration from the Blue Album and Pinkerton and the Green Album, as well as going to one of the famed Weezer Hootenannies this past year. The individual members of Switches have very eclectic music tastes, from 80's pop to 60's bop to Britpop and etc. etc. The prominent genre is powerpop, but there are many brilliant little genre shifts throughout their songs.
Switches' first album is titled "Lay Down The Law". While not very musically new or unique, it's a fun rockin' ride all the way through, with few dead moments and no real filler tracks. Right from the starting gate, with "Drama Queen", Switches set the rocking-out standard and they keep it for most of the album. There are a few boring moments in "Snakes And Ladders" but the track has been slowly growing on me, mostly because of the great vocal parts. The title track, "Lay Down The Law" should have been a massive summer hit (it was still a summer hit, but not on a huge scale). Kind of inane lyrics and a great rockin' feel keep this song marching forward all the way until it ends all too soon. Despite the strong face that "Lay Down The Law" showed, the next track doesn't disappoint or feel like filler. "Coming Down" is an excellent song sung in the Ric Ocasek/Cars style and it's great. The album slows down for "The Need To Be Needed" and features some great falsetto by singer/lead guitar Matt Bishop. The next tracks, "Message From Yuz" and "Every Second Counts" are fairly uneventful, although the killer hook in "Message From Yuz" and the vocals in "Every Second Counts" both deserve mentioning. "Step Kids In Love" is a great piano rocker with some very dark pounding piano at the beginning and some weird plinking later on. "Lovin' It" is kind of a boring song but you forget all about its mediocrity when "Killer Karma" comes on. "Killer Karma" is the best song on the album by far, with everything from a great hook to excellent lyrics and snotty vocals to an interesting rhythm that is part Latin, part one-drop reggae. The album closes with "Testify", which starts out boring but ends strong.
All in all, Switches are definitely a band to watch for in the future. Switches feel as though they're just getting comfortable with themselves as a band, and the stories from each of their members (especially Matt Bishop - playing electric guitar and overdubbing songs at age four and recording hundreds of conflicting-style songs as a teen) leave hope that they'll only get better with time. Hopefully they'll be breaking into the US music scene in full force in the next few years with a new album release that could possibly be even better than this one.
Their entire album, as well as some remixes and B-Sides, is available for streaming on MySpace Music. Seriously, it's a great resource for stuff like this.
Switches' MySpace page
Switches' official web site
Switches' official "DGC/Interscope" web site
(There are multiple Switches websites out there. The former is beautiful and brilliant and has tons of excellent information, including a full band bio. The latter is an ugly, messy, DGC/Interscope cut-and-paste band website that has more than its share of bugs and glitches and has no relevant information. I'm just linking it to make you aware of the two contrasting sites and to let you know that there is a better Switches website out there. I guess the one thing the DGC one has going for it is that there's a forum/message board/comments system, so you can leave messages for the band if you so desire.)
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Step Aside, Coldplay!
The new kings of melodic atmosphere rock have arrived! If only they had the exposure, I'm sure they would be able to whup Coldplay and take their spot on the top. I'm doing my part here to help it happen, I guess.
The band I'm talking about it called "Low vs Diamond" and I have been unable to stop listening to them since I discovered them about a month ago. Their sound/style is like that of Coldplay's. It's a little heavier on the rock and they have no true acoustic songs, but the music contains the same soaring melodies and the same weird atmosphere/ambience noise in the background.
They're a new band, with only a self-titled debut album, but the eleven songs on it are so great that I could listen to them for days on end (and that is not an exaggeration).
The best song on the album serves as the first track, which in most cases is a mistake, but the rest of the songs on the album are excellent enough that the order doesn't matter too much. Just don't leave "Don't Forget Sister" on repeat for too long or you'll wear a groove in your CD and then you won't be able to listen to the rest of the album.
"Don't Forget Sister" is an excellent song that builds gradually into an amazing final section. It starts out with some drums and some piano and some atmosphere and some vocals, then builds and builds into a full-out barrage of awesome alternative pop/rock and finishes with soaring melodies that you can't help singing along with. It's really no surprise that this song landed number 59 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Best Songs of 2008, even though the band still labors in relative obscurity. It's just so amazing.
The rest of the album explores other pop/rock ideas and structures. There is not much acoustic guitar on the album, and it always takes a backseat to the other instruments when there is. There's a fair amount of piano, though. No other styles are explored, so it's not an album that will satisfy everyone, but for anyone who enjoys excellent melodies and meaningful lyrics, I recommend this album. Heck, "Don't Forget Sister" itself is almost worth the cost of the entire album.
Before you purchase, you can listen to the album in its entirety on the band's MySpace page. That's a great new feature from MySpace. I love being able to listen to full albums before I make a decision of whether or not to buy the album. It's great, and you should give it a try with artists that you enjoy as well as new artists that you've discovered.
Low vs Diamond's MySpace page
Low vs Diamond's official website
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Happy Weezer Day!
I guess we'll get the 2009 archives started up now, with this first post of mine in the new year. I have really neglected my blog lately because I don't really use it for small personal updates, and my posts about other things are generally big and long. I just haven't sat down and typed up a big long blog post in a while. My Twitter account is very active, however, and if you want more poojalooba_cow, I suggest you folllow me on Twitter rather than checking up on this blog frequently, because this blog's update schedule is anything but frequent. It might possibly be getting a little busier in the next little while, because I've got some ideas for content that I can blog about. I want to do some CD reviews and some Emerging Artist profiles, and I'll slap them up here on this blog when I get around to writing them.
Anyway, today, Weezer, as a band, turns 17 years old. Sure, it's also Valentine's Day, but I prefer to remember Weezer's birthday instead of some corporate commercialist "holiday". Weezer has come a long way since their humble beginnings in "The Garage" in LA in 1992. Most of it has been good, some of it has been for the worse. I guess I'll go over a little bit of that in this post.
Also, last weekend Weezer won their first Grammy in their career - their song Beverly Hills received a Grammy nomination in 2006 for "Best Rock Song" but they honestly didn't deserve to win that because Beverly Hills is the worst song that Rivers Cuomo ever wrote (the sweet talkbox solos don't even make up for the awful rest of it). This time, they really did deserve the Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video - the video for Pork and Beans is hilarious and was the most-watched video on YouTube for a number of weeks. The song itself also spent eleven weeks at the top of the Billboard Modern Rock chart, but the Grammy award wasn't for the song. Maybe someday if Weezer picks up the game a little bit, someday they might win a Grammy for the actual music they perform. In my opinion, Weezer hasn't released any Grammy-worthy songs since 1996's Pinkerton album, except maybe Hold Me on the Make Believe album (but it wasn't released as a single so it didn't receive enough exposure). I still love Weezer, but their songs are not the best of the best, the cream of the crop (the exceptions are of course, Pinkerton and The Blue Album, which are absolutely amazing instead of just fun like the other Weezer albums).
Hopefully with this new "business model" that Weezer is pursuing - with every band member contributing to the songwriting and other creative processes that used to be hoarded by frontman Rivers Cuomo - the Weez boys can maybe earn back some respect from fans of the old Weezer, as well as gaining new fans and good critical reviews without falling back on tired pop formulas.
I saw Weezer in concert during their 2008 Troublemaker Tour (on October 7, 2008) and it was the most awesome thing I've ever seen. They were way better than they have ever sounded on an album, and Rivers sounded great (I'd seen live videos of Weezer before and Rivers sounded pretty bad, but he sounded excellent in concert. I also learned later that he had just recovered from a head cold. It didn't reflect in his vocal performances at all). Despite all the awesome music, one of the most excellent things at the concert was the statement that Rivers made at the end: "See you next year." That implies, in a vague and subject-to-change way, that Weezer was going to record and release another album quickly and go back on tour in 2009. I heard rumors that Weezer was scheduled to head back into the studio in November 2008, but then Brian Bell quashed that rumor and stated that Weezer had no definite future plans other than enjoying the Red Album for a while. However, recently I've heard reports, from sources very close to the band, that Weezer is working at least part-time in the studio with Jacknife Lee and that means there's possibly an album due at about the same time the Red Album came out last year, and possibly a subsequent tour. Rivers has said that he wants to tour again in 2009. I don't think he'll tour for the Red Album again (Weezer has never done two tours in between albums, except during their five-year hiatus between Pinkerton and the Green Album). I think this means that we can probably expect a Weezer album out in the second half of 2009 somewhere, and hopefully there will be some Grammy-worthy stuff on it this time!
Thursday, November 27, 2008
The Newspaper Music Video
About a month ago, Jman--8 and I decided it'd be fun to make a music video for one of the songs that I had written. Over the course of three days we recorded all the content, and then Jman--8 spent the better part of a month diligently working on editing the video. His efforts have finally paid off with an awesome music video that I'm very impressed with. My only complaint is that the guitars are a tiny bit out-of-sync in some parts (Jman--8 is not a musician, so he didn't have any past experience to work with). Other than that small hitch, I love the video, and I think Jman--8 did an excellent job. Visit the YouTube link or watch it embedded below!
Also, please visit the following links:
http://www.poojalooba.com/06_poojalooba_cow_the_newspaper.mp3 - Download the free mp3 of this song
http://www.poojalooba.com - My website
http://www.myspace.com/poojaloobacow - Official MySpace artist page
http://ilike.com/artist/poojalooba_cow - Check out all my songs on iLike
http://twitter.com/poojalooba_cow - Twitter page
http://apps.facebook.com/ilike/artist/poojalooba_cow -Support me on Facebook
Thanks for watching!
Friday, November 21, 2008
Links To Cool Stuff!
I'm back after a really long break to bring you a few links to cool things. I'll start posting a little more regularly from now on, because I've got three more cool electronics projects that I'd like to write about, and I'm thinking about reviewing some of my favorite classic albums, instead of just new ones. I've also started work on a new website and am writing/recording songs feverishly, so I'll write updates about my music project as well.
For now, though, I've got a list of cool Internet stuff that you should check out.
"A Scientific Attempt To Create The Most Annoying Song Ever" -This "song" is twenty-two minutes of mind-numbing hilarity. It's not really one of the most annoying songs ever, it's one of the most hilarious. Written according to data collected in the 1990's, this song incorporates everything from country western to opera to rap to children's choirs to pipe organs and tubas. Check out the rapping opera singer and the children's choir ripping on Wal-Mart.
"Songs To Wear Pants To" - Andrew "Pants" Huang lives in Toronto and is a prolific songwriter. He writes songs as his full-time job and earns money from commission and from $0.99 downloads of his popular songs. I wish I could earn $50 - $200 per minute of music from people wanting me to write songs about anything from first loves to robot pirates and hot dog eating contests. Here's a list of a few of his songs (there are almost 400 free-to-stream songs in his archives) that demonstrate his breadth and versatility and tongue-in-cheek style. Most of his songs are free to download, but if you like one of the paid ones enough, please give the guy a buck to download it. It's his only source of income, so support the guy while getting awesome songs!
- We Are The Robot Pirates
- Shoot The Zombies
- Fishcat Catfish
- The Touchtone Genius
- Sissi Swings
- Hidden Camera Show
- Mimosa Christmas
- The Story Of Snesly Wipes
- Hasselhoff
- Déjà Vu
- I Am Rock 'N' Roll
- What If
- Everything I Didn't Like About My Previous Girlfriend
- Crunk Juice
- It's Too Loud (Extended Version)
- Lemonade Vendor Asian Small-Clawed Otter
- Air Sitar Baron
- I Am The Hotdog Eating Contest Champion
The Indie Band Survival Guide -For those looking for good advice and information on everything from recording to CD manufacturing to gigging to merchandising, The Indie Band Survival Guide has got you covered. It's just about the coolest thing ever. I've found it very useful in my own musical explorations.
Le Site Du Billou -Billou is a guy from Lyon, France and he's very very smart. He helped me set up the chat function on my old site, and I've respected him very much ever since. He speaks English well enough to be fairly clear on most of his points, but some of his sentences are worded a little weirdly and they take some thinking about before you understand them. He's an excellent HTML coder and .xml gadget-builder. His site is full of little tips and tricks for Google Page Creator, but many apply to other sites as well. His HTML/JavaScript tricks are pretty impressive, and his site is worth checking out, if just for the "Google Page Explorer" gadget that parses and reads the sitemap.xml file of almost any website (every website that has a Sitemap.xml file, at least) and can show you every single file and page attributed to that site.
Nvu/KompoZer - Nvu (pronounced "En-View", for "New View") is a simple WYSIWYG web page editor. KompoZer is the updated version with bug fixes but exactly the same user interface. It's really very easy to use and makes web page authoring quick, painless, and almost fun. You can apply all kinds of attributes to anything just with the click of a button, and easily call external sources like Flash, Applets, CSS Stylesheets, and JavaScript. Think a low-power, free Adobe Dreamweaver and you've got it. I am currently in the process of authoring my own website with the remarkable KompoZer program and I'm enjoying it immensely.
Anyway, I'll be back soon with more personalized updates and I'll get the blog rolling again.
Monday, September 22, 2008
poojalooba_cow: 2 Electronics: 0
Today I scored another point against that devious being, electricity, and without using a single bead of solder or hot-glue. Using only a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, a length of wire, a roll of electric tape, and an old headphone jack, I was able to rig my outdated car cassette tape player to play audio from an iPod or other mp3 player instead. Once again, I'll provide detailed (albeit kind of poor-quality) pictures of the process and the idea behind it.
The story begins with the sudden failure of my car stereo to even power on. I let it sit for a few months without anything changing, but on a whim when I went to get the catalytic converter's heat shield fixed, I asked the mechanics to yank the stereo for me as well.
When I got my car back, I inspected the stereo. There were no problems that I could see with it - the fuses were all intact and nothing was burned out on the circuit board. I removed the pins that prevented me from pulling the stereo out of its niche so that I could insert it and remove it at my pleasure this time (it also makes it vulnerable to stereo-jackers, but who wants a ten-year old stereo console that only plays cassette tapes?).
When I plugged it back in, it powered on just fine, and the radio worked perfectly. The tape player, however, was still messed up. I'm not a fan of tapes - being a more digital-age kind of guy - so I had no use for the tape deck anyway, but I had an idea. Maybe if I could bypass the reader-head on the tape player, and insert an audio feed from say, an iPod, then I would be able to listen to anything I wanted in my outdated old car, instead of being restricted to the radio (all they ever play on the radio is crap anyway. I'm not a teenybopper who enjoys David Archuleta's "Crush" every other song, so there's no appeal for me on the radio, except maybe NPR, which is great).
The inner workings of the stereo console:
There were a few problems. The tape deck's reader head would not engage unless it genuinely thought that there was a tape inside the machine, and the tape deck refused to recognize and play a tape, and it wouldn't eject the tape once you jammed one in there.
I took the tape player out of the main console and messed around with it, determined to overcome these problems. I discovered that the reason it wouldn't eject was because a spring had popped loose, and I put it back in place so that the spring-loaded eject action would work. I discovered that it wouldn't recognize a tape because of an issue with the reader-head section jamming and not fully engaging, because of a problem with the spring-loaded eject button (they're all interrelated. They have gears and little plastic pieces that affect parts clear across the unit, all over the place. It took forever to figure out what parts affected what actions). It wouldn't play a tape because the reader-head wouldn't fully engage and the system was receiving a messed-up audio stream and decided that there couldn't be a tape in with that output.
So, with a little jiggling and clicking of parts and a lot of dumb luck, I finally snapped the reader-head and the eject mechanism back into place and everything ran smoothly. I popped it back in the unit, and it played a tape just fine. The audio was all messed up, though. It sounded as if the sound was coming from underwater - it was all warbly and tinny-sounding. I figured the reader-head was old and messed up. This didn't matter too much, because if I had my way, the reader-head would never be used again.
The tape player section of the stereo console. The eject mechanism is the black plastic face on top of the unit, the reader-head is the square metal thing on the center right with the brown strip coming from it, and the two of them were causing jams underneath the unit on the bottom left (not visible):
The reader-head communicated with the main section of the stereo console through five wires encased in plastic that ran from the reader-head and plugged into a jack on the main control board. I figured if I could find out what signals these five wires sent, I could bypass them and add my own audio instead of the audio that the reader-head would normally pick up. Since the reader-head plugged directly into a jack, I didn't have to desolder anything or cut any connections, I simply unplugged the wires from the jack and popped my own wires in instead. Through a highly scientific process called "trial and error", I discovered that the top wire was the negative lead for all four other positive leads, the next down was left-channel A-side tape audio, the next down was right-channel A-side tape audio, the next was left-channel B-side tape audio, and the farthest down was right-channel B-side tape audio. I figured it'd be way too much pain to try and configure both sides of tape audio, so I put in a left and a right channel on the A-side of the tape (the two red wires in the picture) and twisted the two negative leads from those wires together and stuck them in the communal negative port (the twisted black wires in the picture).
The reader-head and the bypassed connection. The reader-head's cables are unplugged and the red and black wires are wires that send audio signals from an external source instead of the tape player's source audio:
The dummy tape engaging the reader-head. Since the reader-head is unplugged, the audio is actually coming from the external audio source plugged into the red and black wires in the reader-head's place:
So, as long as there's a dummy tape in the tape player, it will continue to play whatever signals are coming from the reader-head jack, which in this case is music from my iPod. I wrapped the wires through holes in the console frame so they wouldn't come loose or short-circuit each other, then I pulled them around to the front so they'd hang out of the console and be able to have a headphone jack attached to them:
It hangs out about a centimeter from where it normally would fit, because the wires are thick and don't like to be bent three directions and squashed in order to fit, but that's fine because I can now pull the entire console out with greater ease. I might need to do this because it's an old tape player and if it ever has a problem, it'll refuse to play and might jam and then I'd have to open the console up and disengage the reader-head and engage the eject mechanism manually in order to get the dummy tape working again.
This is the end product - what it looks like in my car and how it looks when it's in use. The four wires hang down and are connected to a cut-apart headphone jack that sends the right and left channels from my iPod to the right and left channels of the tape player's reader-head jack:
All in all, this project was a resounding success. I can now listen to whatever I desire whenever I drive anywhere, instead of being confined to silence or crummy radio junk. It works a lot better than one of those FM radio iPod transmitters or even one of those faux-tapes that plays your iPod through a tape (mine uses a tape also, but it's just a dummy and the real audio is a direct line in, so it's better sound fidelity). It's [just barely] not quite as good as a professionally-configured line-in port where all the circuits are built to handle an iPod/mp3 player audio signal, because I'm patching into the signal from an entirely different sort of media. The ultimate redeeming quality of this project is, of course, that it cost me absolutely NOTHING to make, and I even learned a thing or two along the way!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
The Browser Of The Future
Wow. I haven't posted in forever. I've been meaning to post about my new electric guitar and the homemade talkbox I made as well, but I never got around to it. I was kind of waiting for a good opportunity, like once I had finished writing a cool song with guitar/talkbox, but I only just barely did that. I'll supply some wonderful pictures of that sometime later. What I really wanted to write about right now was Google Chrome, though. Maybe the real reason I haven't posted in forever is because I was running FireFox and it was holding me back. Even upgrading to FireFox 3.0.1 wasn't nearly as amazing as switching to Google Chrome has been.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
It's A Long Title For An Album That's Done All Too Soon
Yesterday, Coldplay released a new album, entitled "Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends." I'm a fan of Coldplay because of their laid-back acoustic feel, but this album is decidedly more crunchy. Everything in this album, from their um, interesting choice of album art, to the untidy scrawl of the album name, to the sound of their first single, is more in-your-face and more aggressive and rockin'. I like acoustic music, but I like good rock also. There's always old Coldplay (and plenty of tracks on this album) that I can turn to when I'm feeling mellow, but it's good to hear some rock from the boys.
As with the Weezer Red Album, I'm going to listen to this album for the first time right now, and I'll write my impressions of each song as they come up. I'm not going to put a lyrical excerpt from every song this time. I'll just put lyrics that are catchy or that stand out to me.
Once again, I got the pre-order iTunes edition, so I have two additional bonus tracks: Lost? and the acoustic version of Lovers In Japan. I'll still write about those, but keep in mind that they might not be available to you.
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1. Life In Technicolor
This is an instrumental track. It starts out with chiming sounds and a quick repetitive riff underneath. Next, a plucky stringed instrument (doesn't sound like a guitar...) comes in. More and more layers are added to the mix until it's a pretty good rockin' song, but it contains the classic Coldplay atmospheric noises in the background as well. There are yells by Chris Martin, does it count as instrumental then, even if the voices aren't saying anything?
2. Cemeteries of London
This track bleeds right in from Life In Technicolor. It's got a dark ambient feel, and Chris Martin singing in a weird key signature. It doesn't sound like a minor (aeolian) scale, maybe it's phrygian? Quickly-picked acoustic guitar and slapping drums come in. There's a weird vocal harmony part, and then an electric guitar solo with a voice not unlike the sound on Coldplay's "Talk" comes in. I think this song is about seeing evidence of God in everyday objects. It ends with a nice little sliding-down piano riff that didn't fit with anything else on the song.
3. Lost!
Hard-pounding drums and handclaps, plus pipe organ make the beginning of this song very distinctive. Tambourine and more organ layers come in for the chorus, and an electric guitar comes in halfway through the chorus. Falls into familiar Coldplay territory about two minutes in: Mellow vocal harmonies over atmospheric ambience. There's a distorted guitar solo right after, though, but the harmonies are kept in and hummed this time. This song was way too short. It was amazing, but wasn't long enough.
"You might be a big fish/in a little pond/doesn't mean you've won"
4. 42
Obviously, "42" refers to Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, where it is proclaimed that "42" is the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything. I wonder how this song is going to reference that. There's a weird piano part and then of course, the ambience comes in, but that's okay. I like this kind of ambience, where it's setting a mood and underlaying other things, but I don't like ambience where it's just noise for the sake of noise, like some of the stuff Pink Floyd does. Two minutes in, some kind of weird instrument comes in, like a cross between a trumpet and an electric guitar. This instrument leads into a happy, upbeat second section with a drumbeat and guitar riff that sounds a lot like New Order or The Cure could have done it. It goes back to the original section for the last two lines, and that ruins it. I also did not detect much of an idea about why "42" is the title.
"You thought you might be a ghost/you didn't get to heaven but you made it close"
5. Lovers In Japan / Reign Of Love
This song continues the feel of actually belonging to New Order. There are lots of guitar parts, some acoustic, some ambient, and some fuzzy electric riffs. It makes for a nice mix. There's a plinky piano part in the middle of the first song, it sounds like they put the microphone right next to the "bridge" of the piano where the strings don't vibrate as much and generate a plucky sound. They could be synthesizing it, of course. Lovers In Japan is a very good, happy, upbeat song, but it's kind of inane. It doesn't stick in your memory, because the riffs are too long and the sections change too often. I like it, but I'm not likely to be humming it anytime soon. It'll take a lot longer to memorize all the ins and outs of this song.
Lovers In Japan ends on a big, loud, fuzzy guitar tone, and Reign Of Love fades in right over the top of it. It's got some sweet rolling piano parts in the foreground, with weird percussion noises in the background. I have no idea how these guys recorded all these weird sounds. The rolling piano continues clear to the end and makes a nice finish to the track.
6. Yes (With Hidden Track: Chinese Sleep Chant)
Some very weird noises start out this song. Chris Martin's voice is very heavy in the mix, taking up all the space and leaving not much else able to be heard. It sounds like they put the microphone right in his mouth when recording, it's so resonant. Someone in the band (or I guess it could be someone else...) is good with a violin. It can't have been synthesized, because there are sounds of fingers fretting strings and the box sticking across the strings, making them resonate. It's a quick, low, choppy riff, and it sounds cool. Most of the songs so far have been comprised of a few chords in the background and funky riffs going back and forth between instruments. It's not a bad way to write music, but it sounds a little too... progressive for me. Coldplay is not supposed to be progressive rock, they're supposed to be mellow, beautiful, flowing arrangements filled with emotion and thought-provoking lyrics. I don't like it a ton, but they pull it off pretty well, I guess.
The second song on this track makes up for the really heavy voice in the song before it. There's a fairly heavy (for Coldplay, that is) guitar chopping away at chords and a bass creating a flowing background canvas, and Chris Martin's falsetto is shoved to the very back of the mix, as if it's... I dunno, as if the music were a big waterfall and he was trying to sing from behind the waterfall...
7. Viva la Vida
This song has made the rounds around the modern-rock charts and has remained one of the top-downloaded songs on iTunes since the very day it was available about three months ago. If you haven't heard it yet, there's something wrong, because it's everywhere. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that. It's a great little ditty, played mostly on orchestra instruments (including an upright string bass, none of this imitation electric bass stuff) and concert percussion, not a drum set. It creates a great feeling. The song is about a dethroned king, and thoughts of kings bring back memories of the olden days, and the olden days bring back thoughts of classical music, and this song captures that feel of good ol' classical music, without being classical.
8. Violet Hill
This is the band's first single, and it's done the rounds on iTunes and YouTube and the rock charts as well. It definitely takes the top place on the list of Coldplay Songs With Heavily Distorted Electric Guitar. It's very... crunchy. That word has been used a million times all over the place to describe this song, but that's the only word that fits. It's got very distinctive, rockin' guitars, but they're not very loud in the mix. The lesser-distorted guitars playing ambience take top spot, and the heavy chords come in quieter. It makes for a cool, top-heavy song, and it's no wonder that it's such a hit.
"When the future's architectured/by a carnival of idiots on show/you'd better lie low"
9. Strawberry Swing
Sounds as if they recorded this all together on some concert hall stage, instead of overdubbing tracks in a studio. It's got reverberating handclaps and drums that are giving off a much more rounded sound than they otherwise would in a studio... I dunno, maybe it's just a microphone trick. This song has great folk-style guitar riffs leaning a little bit to the right-side channel of the stereo mix, while the guitar chords come in later, leaning to the left, balancing out the song right as you start to feel a little off-balance. This is kind of an inane, silly, happy pop song, but it's great, and people will love it. It's upbeat, and without a trace of negativity or unhappiness. Since many Coldplay songs deal with loss or insecurity, this is a very welcome change-up for their usual musical theme.
"It's such a perfect day"
10. Death and All His Friends
The beginning reminds me of stuff done by The Fray: quiet, fuzzy, rolling piano and a single voice. Coldplay adds a mellow guitar riffs into it as well. The piano starts to pound the chords together instead of rolling over them, and the guitar riffs gets a little heavier, then comes a heavy one-measure fill, and a perfect pop song is born. The drum beat is the epitome of pop, and the piano is banging out bright chords in a syncopated pattern, and the guitar is drilling into a repetitive riff. Multiple voicals come in for a few great lines, then fade away to let the piano resume rolling and slowing down to finish off the song. Actually, I guess the song is only about halfway done. The piano fades into total silence for a few seconds, then another completely different song comes up, still under the same title. It's got rolling guitar tones reminiscent of the album opener, Life In Technicolor, but this time with words, albeit few of them. This is the last song on the official album, and all three sections of it would be great stand-alone album finishers.
"And/in the end/we lie awake/and we dream of makin' our escape"
11. Lost?
Not to be confused with Lost!, this is Lost?, and it's a more reflective, questioning version of the other one. Even though the lyrics of both songs are exactly the same, the music makes them sound much different. In Lost!, the heavy beat and quick tempo, it sounds as if Chris is singing about being already lost and the hopelessness of things. In Lost?, the slower tempo and the mellow piano chords without any other major music creates a feeling of being in denial about being lost. He sings as if he still has some hope of finding something or being able to get out of the hopelessness, instead of giving up and making the best of the little he has, like on Lost!. It's odd, but the different versions really do carry very different emotions with them, proving that lyrics are not everything.
"Just because I'm losin', doesn't mean I'm lost/doesn't mean I'll stop/doesn't mean I will cross"
12. Lovers In Japan (Acoustic Version)
Fifteen seconds into this song (essentially enough to get a plucky-sounding intro off the ground), and I'm already digging this song a lot. It's not just straight-up major guitar chords, like so many "acoustic" versions of things are. There are plenty of the atmospheric Coldplay sounds here, mostly supplied by a very far away tambourine and a mellow bass line, but there are plenty of very interesting acoustic guitar noises. Dissonances, sustained chords, and silly little repetitive riffs make this feel very... organic. Down-to-earth. Not as produced as all of the other songs on the album. Real. Something like that, I guess. Ends on a very high sustained note that sounds like a voice but is way too high for any normal human being to hit. This tone slowly fades into black, and that finishes up the album.
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In conclusion, I'll say that Coldplay has created another brilliant album full of songs I'm sure to enjoy again and again. There are some problems, some things I didn't like, and just some weird things in general, but those are just small wrinkles in the otherwise smooth, glassy surface of the music. Some of the minor things I have taken issue with include:
-The atmospheric noises: Sure, ambience is great, and it can carry great emotion and can be great for setting the mood of a piece, but when every song has weird noises in the background and constant, high-pitched sighing things, it gets just a little bit old. It seems as if Coldplay is using the ambience as too much of a gimmick, and not a thing to be taken seriously and used sparingly in order to achieve the full effect. It's nothing major, but it detracts from the overall experience by being ever-present and demanding. If they would remove the weird noises in a few places, it would leave their music much bore open and raw and exposed, and that can carry more emotion than ambience will ever be able to.
-The weird multiple-songs-in-one-track idea: Sure, maybe a bonus track at the end of the album is okay, or maybe some kind of short song placed at the end of another long song is acceptable, but when you have seven songs rolled into three tracks, it's a little annoying. I will most probably be clipping these songs all apart and re-labeling them as individual tracks, just so I don't have to skip through things or remember time positions so I can jump right to the song I want to hear. When the last track contains three completely different songs, it could mean one of many things. You can be telling people that you had so many great ideas that you couldn't choose a good album finisher, which leaves you seeming pretty arrogant. You could be saying that you don't know how to pick a good album finisher and haven't given the matter proper thought or production time, which I doubt is the problem here, because this album feels almost too produced, (which is just another very small issue that I had, but not even big enough to merit its own paragraph). Or, it might say that you're trying to be too gimmicky with your music and trying to be clever or funny or quirky, in which case you end up not being taken seriously. Either way, it was kind of lame to stuff three songs into the last track, as well as hiding two other "bonus tracks" throughout the rest of the album. The extra songs are all good songs, but it would be nicer to at least have them out in the open as individual tracks so that you can listen to them and their companions separately and at your leisure.
All in all, though, it's a very good album, full of emotion and thought, and will have me listening to it on repeat for a long time to come. Clocking in at just over 53 minutes, it's not really a short album, but it's such a great musical journey that you'll never realize you've been lost for an hour in the land of Coldplay. 8 out of 10.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
The Greatest Album That Ever Lived?
Weezer's Red Album was just barely released! I haven't listened to it yet, though, but I'm going to be listening to it all night, that's for sure, and I'm going to listen to it for the very first time right now and write my impressions on each of the tracks. They might be edited later on when I'm more familiar with the tracks, but I'll make a note of that, so that my first impressions are also preserved.
No, I'm not proclaiming that Weezer's Red Album is the greatest album ever. It's just a pun on one of the tracks on the album. It's a very good rockin' ride of an album, though, and it departs a little bit more from Weezer's traditional power pop sound, which is by no means a bad thing. I'll go through and listen to the album, and write my views on each song as I go through them. I got the iTunes Deluxe Version Pre-Order, so I have sixteen tracks. The standard Weezer Red Album that is available in stores has only the first ten tracks, the Weezer Red Album Deluxe Version available on iTunes has the first fourteen, the fifteenth track comes with an iTunes purchase of the entire album simultaneously, and the sixteenth track is an iTunes exclusive track that only is available if you pre-ordered the album. That said, some of the tracks I write about will not be available to you (although I'm sure if you look hard enough, you'll be able to find them on the Internet, and I'm not saying any more than that...) Anyway, here goes:
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1. Troublemaker
Not quite a power-pop song, but definitely fairly mainstream. Nice bright guitars. Funny, cool chorus, even if it doesn't mean much. There isn't a whole lot about "troublemaking" in this song, but it's still really cool.
"I'm a troublemaker, never been a faker/doin' things my own way, never givin' up/I'm a troublemaker, not a double-taker/I don't have the patience to keep it on the up"
2. The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations On A Shaker Hymn)
This song is EPIC! I love it. It starts out with a crowd cheering and mellow piano, then goes into a rock-rap section, and after a verse of that, the mellow piano comes in with the rock-rap. Next is an acoustic section with Rivers Cuomo singing in falsetto, then an INCREDIBLE vocal chorus section with the entire band. Back to another acoustic section with higher falsetto, then a straight-up rock section. Brian Bell singing cool backup vocals. An almost swing-style section with offbeat, syncopated drums and guitar. Back to more straight-rock, then a plunky guitar part with Rivers speaking metaphorically about life as a stage. Another vocal chorus (not quite as amazing as the first one, but still darn good). A last rock section, and a great ending chord, sung by the band. Amazing harmonies, this song is excellent.
"After the havoc that I'm gonna wreak/no more words will critics have to speak/I've got the answers to the tangled knot/sleep tight in your cot"
3. Pork And Beans
Great power-poppy song, definitely a "single" sound. The music video is currently the most popular on YouTube, with over 5,000,000 views since May 23rd when it debuted. It's not my favorite song, because it's full of all the standard power chords, but it's got a good hook and nice lyrics. (Don't forget, you should watch the music video for Pork And Beans through this link to help me out in the contest for a guitar signed by Weezer!)
"I ain't gonna wear the clothes that you like/I'm fine and dandy with the me inside/one look in the mirror and I'm tickled pink/I don't give a hoot about what you think"
4. Heart Songs
Cool acoustic intro, with bass drum beats like a heart beating. Rivers is singing about all of his musical influences, from Gordon Lightfoot to Cat Stevens to the Beatles to Iron Maiden to Michael Jackson and Nirvana. It's a cool laid-back song with nice bell sounds. Heavy section when he mentions Nirvana's Nevermind. Synthed strings section that is a perfect foil for the heavy building guitar part. Excellent vocal counterpart breakdown with the band singing the chorus at half speed and Rivers overlaying it with repeated sections.
"These are my heart songs/they never feel wrong/and when I wake, for goodness' sake/these are the songs I keep singin'"
5. Everybody Get Dangerous
Sounds like a car speeding by and breaking glass, then some sweet chugging guitar comes in. Rivers is "singing" rap-rock about being bad as a kid. A song akin to "Troublemaker" but with more admissions to being a bad kid. Very good chugging guitars and fast vocals, reminds me of Anthony Kiedis' (Red Hot Chili Peppers) singing style. A long "bridge" section without the chugging guitars. Rivers holds out "place" for about a minute while the rest of the band comes in with other parts, then it's back to the march of the awesome guitar! The guitar ends suddenly and is replaced with a really sweet drum solo with falsetto yells on top of it, and this fades into the next song.
"And what will we say when our kids come to us/and ask with a smile on their face/hey, Dad my friends got some new ninja swords/is it cool if we slash up this place?"
6. Dreamin'
Another epic song, happy and upbeat. Cool ambient intro, standard pop-rock beginning, then fades into a cool mellow section with Brian singing lead and Rivers singing counterpart. A little section with some cool guitars in the middle that make you think it's going to go back into the heavy rock, but then it heads back into mellow counterparts again. Eventually, the pop rock comes back in underneath the counterpart and they make an excellent combination, until the straight-rock last four lines take over to finish up the song.
"I'm dreamin' in the morning, I'm dreamin' all through the night/and when I'm dreamin' I know that it's all right/I'm dreamin' in the evening, I'm dreamin' all through the day/and when I'm dreamin' I know that it's okay"
7. Thought I Knew
It's got a techno sound to the beginning, then comes in with an acoustic guitar and bass. This is a song that Brian wrote for his band, The Relationship, and he sings lead in the re-done Weezer version. This is originally a really dark-sounding minor key song, but Weezer has made it a light pop ballad. Brian has a very good voice. I like it, and it's a fresh change from Rivers (not that he's a bad singer, but it's way cool when bands have other people sing lead). Got a cool wandering guitar solo (first one on the album...) through the last chorus and breakdown.
"Sorry, if I caused you pain/sorry, I forgot your name/sorry, but you left me out in the rain"
8. Cold Dark World
Scott Shriner wrote the music and sang for this song, and it's got a really cool bass line (of course, seeing as how he is the bassist), keeps chugging and is just loud enough to be heard but not be overbearing. This is a really dark, almost creepy song, but it's so cool. It's another fresh change for Weezer, and this album is looking to be full of those. Cool synths and distorted vocals, plus really cool clicks on the percussion track, offbeat and perfectly fitting with the song.
"Angel girl in a cold dark world/I’m gonna be your man/angel girl in a cold dark world/I’ll make you understand"
9. Automatic
Drummer Patrick Wilson wrote this song, and frontman Rivers played drums, while Pat played guitar and sang. He's got a really great voice, deeper, throatier, and broader than Rivers'. Pat wrote it about loving his family. It's got really chugging guitars and a really sweet guitar solo (the second on the album, and it's really short, and this is the second-to-last song on the "official" album. Apparently guitar solos aren't what Weezer focused on this time around). Nice vocal harmonies. The guitar is really distorted and sounds way cool.
"When do I lay down/and get to see the world inside your eyes?/how can I reach out/and hold on to the joy you’ve got inside?"
10. The Angel And The One
Slow ballad-type song at the beginning. Rivers sings this song kind of emotionlessly, but all the emotion is still translated right through to you through the music, which is dark and sad as well as hopeful and promising as well. It gets happier about two minutes into the song, and Rivers adds some emotion to his voice. There's a part with standard poppy power chords, but they're fuzzed out and shoved to the back of the mix in favor of the ambient synthesizers and the vocals, and it creates a really cool effect. The vocals end at about five minutes but there's still two minutes of music left after that. It fades down quiet and then starts to build back up. Slightly dissonant and very mellow guitar chords and synths make a great finisher to the official album, but I'm glad I've got six songs to go.
"I’ve reached a higher place/that no one else can make a claim in/I’ll take you there my friend/I’m reaching out my hand, so take it/We are the angels and we are the ones that are praying"
11. Miss Sweeney
This song is hilariously unconventional. It starts out with a big sustained synth and a guy talking over an office intercom. Rivers comes in rapping as if he's continuing the message of the manager on the intercom, discussing business with Miss Sweeney, then comes in with a love-struck chorus. He then apologizes for the chorus and says he doesn't know what came over him, then goes back to talking business, and then comes into another chorus and admits that he's falling for... his secretary, and how much she means to him. It's a really sweet song though, and it's got some great parts. A choppy acoustic guitar plays during the verses and the breakdown, and there's a great bright, not-too-distorted electric guitar part in the choruses.
"Girl, you make the rain clouds disappear/the sun always shines when you’re near/I’m waiting until you love me"
12. Pig
This is a song that Rivers wrote about the life of a pig. He grows up with his family, finds a wife, has children, and is slaughtered. Fans loved Rivers' demo so much that it is in the album by popular demand (I suspect that Rivers liked this song, also, because it's amazing). This song starts with great foreign-sounding drums, like a shaker and an snare drum with the snare turned half-off, plus lots of hand claps and percussive strums with the acoustic guitar. Rivers and Brian narrate the life of the pig, Rivers semi-rapping the lyrics and Brian singing the falsetto harmonies that used to be Matt Sharp's job. Nice piano chords come in and synth strings and make it incredible. I think I detect a bit of clarinet as well, and I know Rivers can play the clarinet, so it may be possible (EDIT: I do believe it's actually a harmonica). Super-distorted guitar and bass at the bottom of the mix make it powerful as well as quaint and hilarious. If you didn't know the title, you'd think it was just a song about human life, until the very end where Rivers discusses getting slaughtered and giving thanks to Farmer Pete for giving him food and taking care of him. It drops down back to laid-back acoustic guitar and slow drums, and then is over all too soon.
"I’d like to thank Farmer Pete/for bringing me scraps of food that I could eat/he always had a smile on his face/he didn’t want to think of this day"
13. The Spider
Another song about animals having to die, but not entirely. There is a spider in the story, but the main gist of this song is the idea that we don't have much time before our lives are gone and we need to make the most of them and not be afraid of what might happen. Rivers' vocals sound like he sang on a stage and put the microphone at the back of the audience. There are nice ambient synths in the background. There's a lot of acoustic guitar on this album, more than all the rest of the Weezer albums combined. I might have to get some tabs for these songs, because I like to play along with Weezer, but if the Weezer music is acoustic and I'm playing along on an acoustic, it'll sound so much better.
"There’s a spider in the drain and he’s feeling pain/and he doesn’t want to die any more than you or I/he’s struggling to live but he doesn’t have much time/any more than you or I, you or I"
14. King
Scott sings lead on this song, because Rivers didn't like it but Scott fought for it to be put in the Deluxe Version. Scott sounds like he could be a country singer or something. He's got a deep, scratchy voice that sounds great. Amazing reverberating synths come in after the acoustic guitar has been playing alone for a while. There's also a lot of synth work in this album, and other Weezer albums have hardly had any. It's nice to hear them branching out from the standard rock band instruments, but it seems almost that they're using them as too much of a gimmick instead of enhancing their music. The synths sound great, but they're unnecessary in some sections of the album. Later on in this song, a really distorted bass comes in, which is an interesting combination, because the acoustic guitar is still playing mellow Spanish-style chords. Good, original drum beat with more than a two-count repeat rate. This song is like a mix of classical Spanish music, New Wave synthesized stuff, and hard rock. It's way cool.
"You see I own this town. You best not come around/if you wanna get by, then cool it down/if you wanna start something, know one thing: I’m king"
15. It's Easy
Country-pop acoustic guitar work at the beginning of this song. It sounds like Brian singing (it definitely isn't Rivers). Really cool acoustic bass guitar sounds in this song. It would be way cool if Scott played an upright string bass, but an acoustic bass guitar is pretty cool also. Excellent acoustic guitar solo. I really need the guitar tabs to some of these songs, because I'm really digging the acoustic guitar stuff. This was a sweet country-style song (even though I don't specifically like country) with awesome riffs in it. Great break from power-pop and power chords for Weezer.
"Gimme time, give it up/draw the line, raise the cup (EDIT: I'm pretty sure "raise the gun" is the actual lyric, and it fits more with the song's idea as well [EDIT EDIT: I guess it actually is "raise the cup," even though "raise the gun" fits so much better])/it's easy to be mean (EDIT: "not to be mean")"
16. I Can Love
Sounds like a poor-quality garage band recorded with an eight-track. Rivers has a great falsetto, but this is some kind of weird jam of a song that could be cool if it were properly mixed. I can't hear enough of the parts (I guess I'm just not used to pre-production demos). This is the iTunes exclusive pre-order track, and it's pretty cool, but I don't like the poor audio quality. I guess it's not poor quality, so much as it is a few microphones set up around the band jamming, with no post-recording production or anything like that. Sweet twangy guitar riffs, though. You can hear Rivers giving instructions as they play the bridge. "Six times", et cetera.
"I didn't hope for much, I was used to how things were/even though I was not sure, you'd say/I was throwin' it all away and I never learned to heal"
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In conclusion, I really like the Red Album. It's a great turn away from power pop for Weezer, and it's an amazing musical journey. Sure, there's nothing wrong with power pop, but there's only so much you can do with twelve power chords, right? Exactly. The acoustic guitar, the synths, the alternate singers and the unconventional song forms all combine to make a completely original album full of great songs that you'll want to listen to again and again until you have squeezed every last drop of amazingness from them (which will take an incredibly long time). 9 out of 10.