January 2008

The Archives

• 01.31.08
  THE THIRTYING: week one   thethirtying (0)

  Welcome to a new regular feature here at Taking Tiger Mountain. I’m exceptionally proud to hand over the reigns each Thursday to Dan Solomon, a fantastic writer and thinker. He’s currently spending his time away from the fractured bubble of American culture, tucked away in the heart of London. From there, he’s devoting his idle brain cycles to thoughts about the perverse worlds of sports, politics, music. He’s been kind enough to contribute his words here for everyone. Please enjoy this first installment of The Thirtying, a column whose title I’m not even sure of the exact meaning, but was promised it would be revealed shortly.

  Check back each week to watch the ideas evolve.

  

  I’ll miss John Edwards, and fear that his withdrawal from the Presidential primary campaign bodes poorly for Eli Manning’s chances of success in the Super Bowl. I can’t explain how I have become convinced that the Presidential candidacy of a former Senator from North Carolina is intimately intertwined with the on-field fortunes of a quarterback for the New York Giants who hails from Louisiana, but I know that it’s true. It is a feeling in my gut, and I know that such instinctual reactions are to be trusted. Eli’s future was wide open as long as John Edwards had the chance to pick up enough delegates on Super Tuesday to play kingmaker at the convention, but now I fear for the Giants. Eli will likely be crippled by Junior Seau and it’s entirely possible- likely, even- that he’ll never walk again after Sunday night. He’ll eventually appear in commercials in which he’s wheeled around by his brother as they advocate for embryonic stem cell research, and he’ll take on some work as an occasional commentator for mid-market NFL games, a job he’ll be given mostly out of pity.

  What the fuck? That was a morbid turn for that train of thought to take. Eli crippled? Jesus, I hope not. He may be on the verge of becoming the only trustworthy quarterback in the NFC, a surprise fuck you to every other team in the conference, especially the Cowboys, and it would be tragic to see that extinguished by Junior Seau in the third quarter of a Super Bowl in which the Giants lead by fourteen points at the half…

  And there’s no reason to suspect that it will. Football and politics are both vitally important to understanding the American psyche, but attempts to link the two beyond the superficial tend to result in forced comparisons and analogies. Like Rudy Giuliani- another Loser who, if he’s not officially out of the race as I type this, will likely be done by the time you read it- who insisted that he was the Presidential equivalent of the Giants. Well, they’re both from New York… but other than that, there’s no parallel. The Giants were early front-runners who appeared highly vulnerable and forgotten as the season progressed, only to surprise the nation by knocking off their high-flying opponents in contest after contest, eventually winning the opportunity to face the opposing front-runner in a final match. Well, that sounds more like John McCain, when you get right down to it. Giuliani was always more like the Dallas Cowboys, totally unprepared for an actual contest after coasting for so many weeks on a the notion of inevitability.

  But, Jesus, all of this is talk about football and politics, and this is a music blog. Are you still with me? Were you ever?

  There are other parallels to draw, that are unrelated to the NFL, but which may be interesting and useful. Is Giuliani the analogue to 50 Cent in his showdown with Kanye? That’s a pretty 2007-centric sentiment, but it’s the New York thing again… In truth, Giuliani is mostly irrelevant, and there are few lessons to draw from his campaign’s implosion, except maybe that there aren’t enough Americans who were fucked by their daddies to make a straight-up Fascist a viable Presidential candidate. Which, at the very least, is reassuring.

  Have you ever met someone who had the wrong impression of the sort of person they were? I used to have a roommate who saw himself in one light and had a hard time adjusting when he realized that his role in any group was not the role he wanted or expected. He thought that, in most foursomes, he was the Paul of the group, but four of us lived in that apartment, and the other three of us saw him as the Ringo. It’s a terrifying sight to behold, someone forced to accept that the world does not see them as they see themselves, and that’s the human tragedy in watching a creepy little Fascist like Rudy Giuliani sulk back home to his consulting agency where even a failed Presidential campaign will raise his rates by 20%. Giuliani thought that he was the sort of person people would admire by sheer force or presence, a Jay-Z type, and instead he found out that he was a novelty act, one of the Shop Boyz. After taking a look at him, some were frightened, some were questioning and unconvinced, but most were just not interested- there were grown-ups present.

  And so what if those grown-ups are Mitt Romney and John McCain? This is America in 2008, and they are enough to pass as such. In the remaining foursome of Republican candidates as of the Florida Primary, those two were Paul and John, respectively, if only because someone had to be and it wasn’t going to be Rudy or Huckabee. Change the group and they’ll change roles, but that’s as good as it gets if you’re a Republican partisan right now.

  Both Romney and McCain have tragicomic videos on YouTube, incidentally, based on their hilarious and unsettling understanding of popular music. Romney’s “Who Let The Dogs Out” moment is a brief flash of stark psychological terror, but it’s McCain’s “Bomb Iran” that reveals just how dangerous old people become when they think that they’re trying to be relevant. By all rights, John McCain should be making well, cut of my legs and call me shorty-style grandpa jokes, but as long as he’s a significant figure in the American political landscape, he’ll continue trying to find ways to try to connect, and that may well lead to disaster.

  Except not really, because John McCain has about the same chances of being the President of the United States as the New York Giants have of clearing a thirty point spread against the Patriots on Sunday. Which leads to another fallacy in the football analogies- if McCain is only able to fill the role of the Giants if you give him a thirty-point lead, and Hillary Clinton is clearly the Patriots, with Bill Clinton filling the Bill Belichik role, then what does that make Obama and Romney? Furthermore, who’s actually the Giants? Where do you find a Ringo in this group? You have to suspect that it’d be Romney, but who does that make George Harrison…?

  And this is why writing about politics in a music blog is a waste of time; furthermore, it’s why political blogs are probably less relevant to the real world, whatever that really means, than your average music blog. So don’t let yourself feel like you’re an apathetic symbol of your generation if you check your Pitchfork bookmark more often than the Daily Kos - at least talking about music doesn’t reduce anything except popular culture to the role of popular culture, and that is acceptable.

  - Dan Solomon

• 01.27.08
  DAN DEACON/ULITIMATE REALITY - EL REY, Los Angeles 01.15.08   Live Reviews (0)

  

  My latest review is up:Dan Deacon & The Ultimate Reality Tour at the El Rey in Los Angeles.

  Read it here at LOOSE RECORD.

  To check out a sample of the Ultimate Reality film - CLICK

  Photo of Dan Deacon via Rafe Baron. Thanks!

• 01.26.08
  THANK YOU: …and hello new folks.   Rant, Singles (0)

  

  To the few folks who’ve been visiting lately, a big thank you. Any eyes on the page are a motivation to churn out wore words. I’m going to be focusing on bringing more regular content to the site. I hesitate to put a formal schedule to it, as the day job still holds a grip on the majority of my time, but my goal is to bring updates to you every Monday-Wednesday-Friday. The format is still really being defined, the little stylistic tics still being hunted down and corrected. I’m also daydreaming about expanding the content to other writers down the road, potentially syndicating some things written by folks I know.

  If you are so inclined, I’m always looking to expand my roster of logos. At the moment, I culled the backgrounds for my logo from an assortment of my own photography and am always looking for more. I’m going to create a page to host the full photographs of the ones submitted by readers with link backs and joyous thanks. If you’d like to submit one, please feel free to EMAIL them to me and I’ll add them to the rotating roster. The final image format will be 336×336 with the TTM logo over the top half of the image, so the abstract stuff seems to work best.

  If you happen to be a fantastical designer who’d like to work me up a logo, that’s also awesome. Feel free to EMAIL me as well, you imaginary internet designer person.

  I’ll leave you with a song:

  The Books – Smells Like Content
  (from 2005’s Lost and Safe)

  Click to LISTEN and download.

  Purchase at Insound

  This song, for me, embodies a rainy Chicago day. The bulk of my last days in that city were wrapped in a bizzare cloud of confusion and potential that this song embodies. The skittering percussion and enveloping fragments of guitar feel much like the overarching feeling that permeated my last year in Chicago. I was gripped by a burden of of being simultaneously connected and fundamentally disconnected to the world, so much that I abandoned most every venture. The seeds of my drive and ability to write were hidden away in a long long winter, buried in an abstract comfort with the place I’d stuck myself. It’s a beautiful song none the less; efficiently encapsulating in a way that few other songs have, the calm that comes from recognizing the both the futility and beauty in life.

• 01.22.08
  SINGLE: Frightened Rabbit - The Greys   Singles (1)

  

  The crest may be more than formed on the cultural wave that is indie rock, but as the blue waters turn into a marketed froth of money, quality can still creep through. Like a bullet from the chamber,”The Greys” opens with a stuttery driving guitar line and it hardly lets go till the track is over. Beyond the cute turn of a phrase about depression between “The Blues” and “The Greys,” the lyrics aren’t much but the joy comes not from the lyrics, but the relentless simplicity of the tune. There’s little variation throughout the song, but for the two and a half minute duration, it efficiently distracts you from its shortcomings.

  CLICK to listen.

• 01.18.08
  2007’s Missteps   2007wrapup (0)

  2007 was a weird year. Like any year, a lot of good releases fluttered their way onto my hard drive, but I did notice that there were a handful of noticeably mediocre follow-up releases. Not that they were albums that were expressly bad, but more albums that the initial sugar high faded far quicker than I would have liked:

  
  

  GOGOL BORDELLO - SUPER TARANTA

  Purchase at Insound

  I’m a pretty staunch fan of Gogol Bordello despite whatever they may release. There aren’t many bands that I follow who’s career rests on solely their live show. While Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike was a solid release, the real majesty lies in their live show; they basically perform every song as if it were the final song of a third encore. Super Taranta isn’t necessarily a bad album but it certainly lacks the staying power their previous release. I’d give half the tracks passing marks, but a few of the later songs definitely veer into the land of filler.

  PEAK: Super Theory Of Super Everything

  This jaunty number takes on a pretty archetypical format for a Gogol Bordello song: accordian, dub bass, and gypsy violin. What takes the song outside the usual is the lyrics. I’m content with any Pesudo-Balkan folk-punk song that spends 3 minutes ruminating on quantum physics and athiesim.

  VALLEY: Harem In Tuscany (Taranta)

  A moment early in the album that veers dangerously into a feeling of parody. It lacks the pop-ish hooks that usually pull better Gogol tracks out of that dangerously campy place that only a singer with a Russian accent can lead to.

  BERIUT - THE FLYING CUP CLUB

  Purchase at Insound

  PEAK: Guyamas Sonora

  This song is the sole track on the album that I found myself revisiting repeatedly. It’s one of the mid-tempo numbers, full of the usually gorgeous floaty horns and stumblingly loose percussion.

  VALLEY: The Whole Album

  Now, that could be unnecessarily harsh, but there’s just something lacking from the album as a whole. The biggest hindrance to The Flying Cup Club is the basic fact that there’s a uniformity to all the tracks. This commonality isn’t really anything bad, most any song that Zach Condon writes is going to have a unique glow about it, but there is certainly less urgency overall than was contained in 2006’s Gulag Orkestar.
  

  IRON AND WINE - THE SHEPHERD’S DOG

  Purchase at Insound

  It’s the ultimate conundrum when an artist takes the time to grow and takes such a shift to polarize the fanbase. I do like to call bullshit on people who can’t handle such growth, but even I fall prey to just missing the old days with Iron and Wine. The Shepherd’s Dog made it onto many peoples “Best of ‘07″ lists, but I can only wish that I loved it so much.

  PEAK: Boy With A Coin

  This song retains much of the laid back vibe of older Iron and Wine, save a few backwards guitar overdubs. The key to this song lies in the syncopated clapping, which unlike some of the other additions that scatter The Shepherd’s Dog work to add to the mystery of the song. I honestly didn’t really wrap my head around the track till I caught the music video, which just grabbed me with it’s lovely simplicity.

  VALLEY: Lovesong Of The Buzzard

  While at the core, I can see that this is a very straightforward Iron and Wine song, the addition of a meandering organ just distracts the hell out of me. I ultimately can’t fault the man for growing. Sticking to the unencumbered lo-fi style can only be satisfying for an artist for so long. Even at his worst, Sam Beam makes some gorgeous music, it’s simply that throwing in layers of organs, funky percussion, and somber piano only pushes his music into a more generic realm, stripping away the alone on front porch feeling of his earlier recordings.
  

  THE ARCADE FIRE - NEON BIBLE

  Purchase at Insound

  PEAK: Neon Bible

  Utilizing pretty much just Win’s reverbed voice and some lonely strings, more is truly conveyed with less. Neon Bible manages to be understated and successful, a tough gamble for a band who’s songbook rests on a pillar of melodrama. Points also for the abstract and semi-interactive music video.

  VALLEY: No Cars Go

  This song honestly comes pretty close to being a moment that doesn’t bother me so much, but the fact that it misses the mark by so little frustrates me ever more. Like “Keep The Car Running”, the majority of this album plods along, lacking the fierce urgency of older tracks like “Wake Up” and “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)”. I feel in some way that it’s just an fault of the production. Even at its peaks, I’m not swept away like I was with Funeral. Quite possibly, it’s also the fact that the whole Arcade Fire sound isn’t new to me anymore and I’m just bored with the predictable moments when the choir of voices kicks in or the mid-song arrival of percussion. Even while the initial magic is gone, I’ll go see them any chance I can as their live show is, as everyone knows, captivating. No matter what kind of weird haircut Win Butler decides to get.