Coldplay – A Rush of Blood to the Head pt 1

To be ten years behind is pretty bad I suppose. There are a lot of things that can get in the way. Stubbornness probably being key, but pride mixed in somewhere. I hadn’t heard the entirety of this album (although I always did love the second, huge rush always) ever until a week ago. I came across a copy of it and found something both endearing and rather impressive; and driving to work in a traffic-drenched rush last Friday, I put it on the radio to change discs and “Yellow” was blasting and well, I can take a hint (different albums I know.) And while I cant help but notice how it reminds me a lot of Radiohead in instances, it’s also very warmly, growing on me with each repeated listen. The lyrics are longing, almost melancholic and definitely despaired words that are honest and heartfelt and the sounds are bright and vividly full of life. It’s starting to build a nest and I can’t help but notice how much I like it.

This “Politik” song floored me because of the unafraid nature of playing with the drastic loud/soft policy, while employing strings and more piano into the hushed areas. I remember being at a bar with friends and I think it was D who figured it be good to play something by Coldplay on the jukebox, I foolishly scoffed and he picked something I’d never heard so I could blindly gain some respect and it was sweet. It’s a dramatic way to begin, but then again the cover is dramatic and it is called A Rush of Blood to the Head, and that’s why I like it. It’s pretty brave, exploding from before and employing a grander scale that somehow, feels more personal. The entire time, he’s singing “open up your eyes…” while this piano clanks away in the foreground. The music builds and builds into a definite rush of blood to head and is an astounding opener.

I’ve got a strong feeling that I can come back and write about this album some more, so instead of adding the bookend (yes later) I go with that aforementioned “In My Place” (the rush from the outset). The drums are immediately affecting: they pound away to a steady pace and truly act as an anchor. The way the cymbals crash loudly, the way the snare is relentless, it’s big and loud and awesome. And the guitar, well the guitar melody on this track is what makes it one of the best songs of that entire decade (2000s) because it’s chillingly mesmerizing and sweeping. It’s brilliantly colorful and it reins a wall of sound that commands respect; somewhat countrified with its adorned counter-melody, the sparkling melody is a shining winner. All together, the lyrics and of course, those strings at the end, make it what you’d call pop gem, it’s still very much in the rock playbook. And perhaps the rockist at heart can see it as such; until then, there’s plenty more discovery to burst about. – Bryan

Animal Collective - Centipede Hz

I wonder how many times I’ve said (felt) this in past years but it just seems like this year is simply blowing by. It feels like it’s been a really strange year where a lot has happened, in fairly important aspects and still during it, seems like a struggling blur of fog. It definitely feels that way when I consider the 2012 music I’ve actually found, in comparison to years past, because objectively, I’ve simply found a lot less music this year.

That feels very sad in a way. But it highlights the music that I have been able to find, as some very awesome gems. And while, sure, it’s probably not anything earth-shattering new or ‘rare,’ the effect still seems to take on the same value as ever before and in the end, it feels whole. And to really juxtapose it, I’m planning (and have for a week now) on just mad-dashing it (getting as much as I can) to the end of the year.

Together, not as sad, but the main aim was to say: well I’ve found less (so far) but what I’ve found, it’s still very dear. And there was times where an album would consume my thoughts, mind and ears for a month at a time. I think this was mostly how Centipede Hz found me during the month of September and how we lived together throughout most of that month and some of October. And while yes, a lot of this reaching for the exact same album over and over – sure, I would sprinkle your obligatory regular selection from the library music (an LCD Soundsystem record here, 808s sometimes, a lot of Interpol for some reason and Wilco in the fall just sound right in the car) – is my own doing, it just seems entirely mutual and comfortable at the same time. I would never skip around and it always started from the beginning to the end – to where I was driving a dreary 35 MPH for the first two or three minutes of my drive, while the pounding of “Moonjock” just encompasses me, up until the drive home anywhere in between 7pm to whatever and these “Pulleys” just yanking away – and the whole album really kills.

I’d just say to listen to each of these selections if you can stomach them through entirety, unless you’re already a fan, and entirely consume them. What really floors me about “Applesauce” is the way it solidifies the album’s beginning and ties it to the middle, heart, of the album with a vivid, driving and fluid pace. A lot of complaints on this album were regarding the immediacy, reactionary or not, it’s definitely an afterthought when you truly consider the ever-shifting scope of their delivery. The song sings about the innocence of youth and feeling absolutely fantastic and yet, it questions the fast pace of our now-adult lives and how it all seems a blur (“I’m losing things so fast…”) to this hyper, tumultuous array of percussion drums and patterns. The song never truly finds a chorus or verse, and instead relentlessly pounds away in an almost circular feel.

And there’d be the nights where I’d lay in bed, in the dark sometimes sure, with the headphones grafted on and just getting lost inside of “Amanita” and its sincerely trippy exposure. Well Amanita can be two things, purely a mushroom that can be deadly sometimes, so the whole song could be about the escape/leap into death? And there is this Amanita Muscaria: the indigenous people of Russia would use this mushroom as some kind of entheogen (substance to go psycho on). So it could also be a reference to drugs and just how the feeling is. Either way, the song begins with a slow, trance-like pattern and rides on this high for the first half, before everything breaks away and explodes. The second half towers over with rapid percussion and a dance-like chanting that amazingly closes the album out. The entire time, the actual lyrics discuss jumping into a forest and running deep not returning “Until I can’t remember my name.” An uncontrollable feeling, the first half makes references to a time before technology and what will happen when all the blogs? close down. Very heady, sure, totally worth it. I’m glad it took over my crazy mind for a good month, it sure did it well.

No album version available, here is a live version with “My Girls” on the front half. Amanita around 6:50.  – Bryan

Crazy and Lost Samples of Life

I’m just feeling like unraveling myself some more throughout this heady space of a blog we’ve created and it definitely feels like a good enough time to try to start. And while I know December feels like a reach, I think we can sort of combine for a strong showing. Plus, that’s just such an awesome word, it feels good to use it and try a refreshing new outlook.

I had St. Elsewhere when it came out, I remember it came out in April 2006 and I remember I bought it that weekend or soon after. I remember that spring waking up at like five in the am to work at an old job until the very deep night. I remember doing it all because Radiohead was that summer and that was the entire funding: relentless overtime. I remember burning out, I also vaguely remember the details of those days – it all feels so far away. Anyways, this album I remember because I’d blast it early in the morning. I fell hard for “Crazy” but the album didn’t grow that much on me. Subjectively speaking, it be like somewhere in the murky 60s or 70s in a list of 100 from that year. Regardless, the point is “Crazy,” yes, that year – man “Wolf Like Me” is perhaps better? – well so yeah it was the best song, I love it still, some say best of that decade that just ended? I wouldn’t argue much, but I very recently just found out this “Crazy” used a great sample.

I’ve never seen this movie it’s from, Preparati la bara, but the song is “Last Man Standing” by the Reverberi Bros. This sounds like a solemn hymn, especially the way the voices resonate throughout, without ever vocalizing an actual word. The trumpet, it’s definitely the leader – it lulls, and rolls over – before the strings add flair and drama; all together, it’s a sort of marching, towering piece that definitely breathes a steady pace. Mechanically, it’s less than three minutes and still, very moving in it of itself.

And well, this is “Crazy.” Of course you gotta love the way the voices, this time, feel like they might be going somewhere, whereas on the Italian original, they’re far more pensive. On this version, Danger Mouse’s beats take the high road and bumping, steady and propulsive, they allow for Cee-lo’s voice to just rush in and out of focus. I think that’s the brilliance of it, the ebb and flow of their styles into what is obviously tremendous chemistry. And it’s a nod to both of them really when noticing the success Danger Mouse has had outside of Gnarls Barkley (Beck, The Black Keys, Danger Doom) and Cee-lo already has a song some fashion as the best song of this decade? (“FUCK YOU”) that this is really a pretty fantastic duo. And… this is a bad ass video right?

I remember seeing them cover aforesaid Radiohead’s “Reckoner” at ACL in 2007, at the height of the “In Rainbows gush of 2007, i.e. Radiohead made music before 2007?, i.e. the time Radiohead really broke through, i.e. what’s Kid A, i.e. the original surge, i.e. and does the Bends matter anymore?” As in the answer to each is ‘whatever the hipsters say?’ But seriously, here’s to more and hopefully for all ours’’’ sakes, better output. Maybe? I think so. Til then. – Bryan  

The National - Alligator/Secret Meeting

June seemed to be a slow (for lack of a better word) month in that we had three posts by the 10^th of the month and we ended up with a grand total…of three posts in June. The above picture I just featured on the marquee is also from June (this one here is a beautiful American gator) – a sort of cloudy time during the middle of the day that I couldn’t find any other time of the day. Sure it’s been hot and sure it’s been a bit different but my regards and sentiments don’t change on the aim of the blog: a hopefully thriving collection of writing. My compatriots don’t seem to share the same vision I have; heck, my dry spell for most of this year doesn’t seem to share the unlikely vision my brain has. Maybe I'm crazy, probably but for now, it’s gonna be a July or bust kind of month. July reigns as one of my favorite months because it’s sort of in the middle and it’s also a transitional/longing period for many. You know, the whole ‘it’s almost august before school and work (for most, not me) starts again so let’s enrich July." For me, it’s July, the maybe best month. I’ll be at the Chamizal for the 4^th and hopefully with a better picture than the one above. In the meantime, the realness of The National takes over.

I’ve got I think 3 posts on High Violet and only one on Boxer (which needs to change because that’s the one I was listening to earlier) but contrary to what the masses assume, The National made music well before either of those albums. This band is truly something for the ages. they make music surreal and amazingly in-tune with what many young adults face in the here and now. And they also name their albums beautifully with each one a story. For a punk college kid in 2005, Alligator really showed me the magic of combining the storied songwriting The National fashion with a compelling lushness of guitars and drums that never seem to tire. This alligator was always spiky and maybe ornery but only if you mess with it.

The first song is where many of us fell in love with the Ohio-created, now Brooklyn-based band. side note: maybe just moving to a new territory would be nice? Anyways, this song reckons some kind of kiss-off to The National’s record label as a sort of “leave me alone, I aint listening to you, I’m having a secret meeting in my head away from you about what this album will be.” Maybe it was like a moment of frustration where the band realized ‘hell you signed us, let us do our thing’ and well, according to most artists (even the big ones on major labels) the labels have a lot of say. And its funny, or ironic, for a better word, the big wigs at a record label isn’t always someone who knows about music. Sort of twisted but I’m sure it’s like that anywhere.

For me personally, the song drives a sort of paranoia, lost in a relationship, lost in a self destructive state of mind sort of. Like the spies are around you and they seem to be honing in on you but is it in your head? Are you having these secret meetings and finding something worse in your own terrible mindframe? They talk about trying to make it as a band (and I think that’s more what it is REALLY about) but I mean, the metaphors run wild on here. At the end he’s screaming about holding an ace but still folding, like a sort of give up where you realize you’re the best but still lose. And then they try to reason with him to throw it away but he’s scared. Like having too much power is scary enough and the ace, well, it’s strong no? I’m not sure, but the sharks always run wild in the river. The point is... they’re lost.

I wanted to include another song but I just realized I ranted for more than 600 words here already, that’s enough. Until then, some hopes and a bad ass song by a bad ass American band. – Bryan 

The White Stripes – De Stijl

When I think about music during the summer and the different waves of heat, The White Stripes always ring that stunningly live sound. All their albums possess a raw, visceral feel (captured mostly through Jack White’s amazingly brisk production) and they sound gorgeously alive on vinyl. The first time I came across this band was during their Elephant rise back in 2003 and I backtracked to their starting music. With De Stijl they truly celebrated their raw blues/punk/rock fusion and delivered an album simplistically excellent. Dutch for ‘the style,’ the album features art from that movement of art known for relishing the simple side of life with use of sole primary colors and basic shapes; and the Stripes took to that matching music that was undeniably blues at the core. Dedicated to an architect who created museums and more in Holland, it was also dedicated to Blind Willie McTell – a blues pioneer from the 1920-40s – the Stripes know their stuff. It’s also the first record I was able to get by them and finishing out a long time without a vinyl play, it sounded great all day today.

With "Apple Blossom" you have your standard blues song that roughly fine-tunes the edges with a lulling guitar and passive feel. It sounds like a lost song by Paul McCartney through White’s romantic lyrics. The feel is truly bluesy with the chords decorating the music’s longing feel. He’s basically telling her that he’ll take care of her, cure all her problems and to stop crying because she looks so much better smiling. A diehard Stripes fan (one of the people who first told me how dynamite they were) told me he thinks it to be about basically trying to bag a virgin with the male’s domineering style. I’m not sure about that but I wouldn’t be surprised! Still, simple blues at it’s finest.

Unlike the aforementioned Elephant, De Stijl won’t feature the roaring guitar shredding or huge sounds the Stripes most recently made. But that’s the beauty of the White Stripes, they made a nice round 6 albums in about 8 years and the only time they took breaks was for White to work on another album or project. They consistently changed up their sound from album to album, shifting through different styles of blues and rock in a ball of awesomeness. So each album is a different story, a different style, a different kind of beauty. Here with “Why Can't You Be Nicer to Me?” they rip through a playful rhyming pattern to more of a louder sound (White shows off his guitar skill and grit like a modern day Jimi Hendrix, yes an apt comparison to make) and perhaps, this is the most charged song on here. Either way, it’s all gold really. – Bryan

Shut Up and Play the Hits (Demand IT)

So this bad ass documentary about LCD Soundsystem's final shows is showing in theatres across the USA for one night only: July 18. Of course, they overlooked huge El Paso but we have the chance to demand it. As of right now only 14 other people have demanded it. Here's to hoping we can see it here in July too!

View all El Paso events on Eventful

Talk Show Host

I want to, I want to be someone else or I'll explode
Floating upon the surface for the birds, the birds, the birds

You want me, well fucking well come and find me
I'll be waiting, with a gun and a pack of sandwiches
And nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing

You want me, well, come on and break the door down
You want me, fucking come on and break the door down
I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready... - Bryan (6/6)