Ranting Details

Lazy Post of the Day: Late to the Party

I know.  I know.  I'm late to the party known as Lykke Li.  This Swedish indie-rock darling, whose debut, Youth Novels, came out last summer, is a perfect mix of quirky vocals reminiscent of Robyn, and the lilting, emotion-fueled instrumentals of Feist's first album; I can't get enough.  For those of you who enjoy a taste before checking out the full album, here is a live performance from a television show in Holland of one of my favorite songs, "Little Bit." 

And just in case you need another, here is "Tonight."

Lazy Post of the Day: OMGee, Gee, Gee, Gee!

I discovered this video last weekend and now I can't get the song or the choreography out of my head.  There  are there nine (NINE!) girls in this Korean pop group.  As if the sheer number of people wasn't infectious enough, they execute some ridiculous dance moves and burrow a pop hook into your head that will play on repeat for days... even if you can't understand a word they're saying.  I love every minute of it.  Need a diversion this Sunday?  Check out "Gee."

Gyrating Hips Will Eat Your Eyes

Holy mother of god, this is the jackpot.  I've never considered myself a diehard Beyonce fan, but there's no denying that she has worked hard for her place as reining diva extraordinaire; I mean her dad was making her run and sing at the same time when she was, like, two years old.  That is dedication.  If there is ever proof of that freakish regime training paying off, it's this video for her heinous new song, "Single Ladies."  Seriously, watching this video is like singing while you're running a marathon... while you're having sex...while you're hopped up on caffeine pills...and found out you have 4 minutes to save the world.  It never stops moving/searing images of leotarded (did I just make a hybrid of leotard and retarded?) hip gyration into my retinas. But the kind of great thing is that, unlike most music videos these days, you can see every bit of the frantic dancing.

The abundance of high cut leotards--with the occasional penche--makes this an obvious contender for an ABT rep program at the Met.  Just picture it: Blaine Hoven as Beyonce, with Marcelo Gomes and David Hallberg as his backup "ladies." In costumes and wigs, of course.  I would watch that on repeat for at least three hours. 

Please give this video three minutes and enjoy the hilarity.  Warning: You might also think it's the best thing ever...at the very least it's the best thing of the day. 

 

Lazy Post Of The Day: Poppy Peter

This is a video of Gavin Creel performing a song called "Do You Remember Me?" by my friends Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.  I missed their concert last week, but apparently this song is from a project they were working on that was based on Peter Pan.  It's one of my favorite songs of theirs.  Be sure to check it out. 

A Day In Three Acts

ACT ONE

It’s a campground.  There are tents everywhere; big ones that tower over my head and cover enough ground to house an entire family.   They sit in clusters containing smaller tents capable of sheltering two people curled up together, and mosquito nets encasing portable grills, coolers full of the weekend’s liquid courage, and folding canvas chairs in every color imaginable, some even in rainbow swirls.  Pickup trucks, rigged with campers built to provide as much home comfort as possible, dig their wheels into the dirty grass as we pull into our space. 

At eleven in the morning it’s clear that last night’s events are just being shaken off.  Yet no matter how hard the man standing at the sink next to the row of porta-potties brushes his teeth, he finds it difficult to erase the taste of beer, pot, and chicken fingers he coated his mouth with at the previous evening’s Dave Matthews Band concert; he keeps brushing. 

Some aren’t even trying to erase the events from the previous two days.  Most of them have been camped in this exact place, attending each of the three concerts the band will give this weekend.  They opt for a morning beer instead of coffee, and proceed to weave between cars as they make their way around to the various tents, visiting new friends who gave them an extra Corona, or were playing their favorite song, “Lie in our Graves,” when they pulled up. 

Each car is splattered in writing as if everyone is a newlywed.  “DMB 4 Life.”  Or the more common “Leroi Forever,” an homage to the recently deceased saxophonist of what is arguably America’s most popular band.  With the mix of jazz, country, pop, and world music it’s a veritable melting pot of styles, but judging from the people surrounding me at the campground, the crowd is not nearly as diverse as the music.  The closest thing I can find to comfort is a clan of men walking around in jean shorts that are the length of boxer-briefs.  For a moment I feel like I’m at the gay pride parade; it’s a fleeting moment.

ACT TWO

It’s a beach.  Or at least the closest you can get to a beach on the Columbia River.  The sand that greets Garrett and me after the boat ride, which almost knocked me into the water several times, is fine, white, and scattered with beer cans.  Those that aren’t mixed into the sand are in the hands of the tanned bodies of muscled men who chase half naked women around before emptying the contents of said beer into bongs that topple down into their throats.  What doesn’t make it into their mouths runs down over their nipples, which are painted with stars and money signs.  Am I in Washington or Cancun around spring break? 

Now instead of RVs and tents all around me, there are boats.  Huge boats with colored decals that look more like Mardi Gras floats than anything.  All I can focus on are the six packs, both littered along the beach and on the bodies, but I worry that staring too long at some of them could result in trouble.  I look as white as the sand in comparison to the other bodies; I would rather not do anything else to attract attention. 

But I seem to be the only one.  People flip down the sandy hill and propel themselves into the water in order to catch the various footballs flying through the air.  Some are completely passed out on the back of boats, baking in the sun. 

As the afternoon progresses we wander to the top of a sandy hill, and I look over to the other side where half naked men and women cavort, kegs being tossed around as carelessly as the hip-hop lyrics that blast from the speakers.  With every boat playing it’s own choice of music, it’s impossible to decipher any one of them, but I think I hear a Dave Matthews song in there. 

It’s clear that the couple next to Garrett and I doesn’t care what music there is – they are lost in each other.  For a moment it looks like they actually might be in each other, but we do our best not to stare in disbelief; why I care about social graces at this moment is beyond me, obviously no one else does. 

ACT THREE

It’s the concert.  20,000 people surround me, and just as many stars loom overhead.  I can see the stars more clearly than the people, partly because I’m afraid to look around, but I’m not afraid to look up. 

I wasn’t afraid when we filed in.  I was excited.  After years away from the band, I’ve spent the past few weeks reacquainting myself with the music that populated my high school make out sessions.  But that excitement quickly waned as my tight jeans and t-shirt attracted looks that made me feel as out of place as a Rockette shopping for groceries.  Whatever preconceptions I had about the band and the open, peaceful community that their music champions are out the window.  The thing that I can’t seem to pinpoint is if we are really being judged or are just conditioned by society to think that we inevitably will be when in a situation like this. 

I hear a thud and Garrett turns to tell me that someone just threw a full beer can at him.  The night may as well be over because whether or not the beer can was intentionally thrown at us, the sad reality of this situation is that I don’t feel safe enough to enjoy the music in any capacity.  Oddly enough I feel safest on the ground, where I am most susceptible to people stumbling over me, or almost crushing my head as they fall over drunk. It’s in this position that I can look up and see the vastness of the Washington sky, where the Big Dipper rests peacefully above the stage.  I can’t see eyes judging me; I can just close mine and escape.   

Lazy Post Of The Day: My New Wallpaper

For no other reason other than the fact that I love it.  I want to live in this wallpaper land. Santogold's new single "Lights Out," a killer song with an amazing video.  Short and sweet. 

Mush Mosh

I’m usually the awkward guy standing in the center of the crowd at a concert.  The one who, despite his best effort, can’t seem to achieve the casual, yet engaged, head bob.  The one standing right in front of you, who might catch your group of friends’ attention, only for you to notice I’m gawking at another person in front of me.  After all, between music, beer, standing for long periods of time, and more beer, concerts have a way of morphing upstanding citizens into Class A specimens for sober people watchers, like myself.   

What I thought was a prime seat in the second row at a recent Ani Difranco concert, turned into a fifteenth row standing room location – prime mosh pit watching territory.  Right in front of me was contact improv replica of the Montana landscape: a rolling mountain of lesbians with Ani Difranco starring as the sun, just peeking over the horizon. 

The weight shifts that are a benchmark of contact improv were there, possibly induced by the prop they had brought to their jam session: a flask.  During the course of the opening band, a children’s group excelling at “Bio Mimicry,” (a fancy name for making animal sounds, like in “Old McDonald”) the ladies passed around their silver flask, taking swigs and then contorting their faces, as the burn of alcohol traveled down their chests.  By the time Difranco took the stage, the group had expanded to ten ladies.  Excuse me…ten drunk ladies. 

It became obvious they wanted the crowd to know that their dedication to Difranco surpassed anyone around them.  As she took the stage, to shattering cheers from the sold-out crowd, the ringleader, a tall blonde with heavy eyes, made it her sole purpose to flag down Ani and make contact with her.  Difranco seemed to look anywhere but. 

While most were enjoying the delight of rapid paced guitar strumming, the ringleader lifted her arm adorned with hemp bracelets and started waving.  Back.  And Forth.  Back.  And Forth.  Only to stop momentarily as the communal flask made its rounds.  The burn hit her chest, and there was only one remedy: kissing as many girls around her as possible. 

Any head bobbing I had in me ceased, as the stultifying behavior a few feet away detracted from my experience of the music.  Just over their heads I could see Difranco, an amalgam of different musical and movement styles, partnering her guitar with a delicate forcefulness.  It was a reminder of the concert that could have been.

She glided back and forth from the microphone, as drums pounded, urging the crowd of ladies to accelerate their movements.  And despite the tone of the song, they did just that.  One thrashed her head, as she lifted a lighter to the roof, during the most somber of numbers about an ex-lover.  Another took a literal approach during one of Difranco’s signature numbers, “Both Hands,” by using both hands to crush her beer can overhead and hurl it to the ground. 

For a group that wanted to prove how connected they were to the performer, they seemed as far away from the performance as possible.  Subsequently, so was I.   There was the movement on stage, Difranco’s fingers blazing on the guitar, mouth spitting out lyrics in a race with her fingers.  There was the mountain of ladies, matted hair and buzz cuts mingling as tongues locked together.  And then me, bobbing my head, not because of the music, but out of sheer dizziness caused by the proceedings.  Maybe you saw me.  I was the surprisingly normal guy in the center of the crowd. 

Lazy Post Of The Day: Show Me Love

SWAMPED WITH A FRIEND IN TOWN, TWO COLLEGE COURSES, EDITING FOR ONE MAGAZINE AND WRITING FOR ANOTHER.  NEEDLESS TO SAY, IT MIGHT BE A FEW DAYS!  SORRY!

Back in 1997, right before Swedish pop producers took a teen girl named Britney Spears to the top of the charts, there was Robyn.  Everything about the bleached blonde's success at the time (with a hit called "Show Me Love") screamed one hit wonder.  After some rumored disputes with her label, she fell off the radar all together and started working on her followup, "Robyn," which just hit the States a few weeks ago. 

Even after reading rave reviews for the album from all the top music critics, I shied away -- then I saw her perform on David Letterman. 

From that moment on I was hooked.  Always one to recommend music to my friends (obnoxious, I know), I haven't been able to stop raving about the album for the past three weeks.  It's the perfect careless summer album which can be played all the way through (a rare feat for any pop album these days that seem to be a handful of great singles with a lot of buffer).  The album leads off with "Konichiwa Bitches" and doesn't stop delighting from there.  Check it out!   

Not Too Feisty

(Sisters.)

You know something is wrong when one of the most exciting moments at a concert is the revelation that you look like Ira Glass.  So describes the evening I spent watching indie songstress Feist at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom. 

Ever since I stumbled upon Feist’s CD “Let It Die” three years ago, I can’t seem to get enough of the Canadian chanteuse.  Not even a fraught over article for an upcoming issue of Movmnt profiling the director of her videos, Patrick Daughters, or his overplayed Apple-endorsed clip for “1,2,3,4” could put a dent in my love.  So when I snatched up a trio of tickets and headed to the concert with Abby Ras and David, I expected to be wowed. 

In many ways, I was.  Feist’s voice has a way of escaping from her body directly to your ears; so clear that it cuts through the crowd like an indie angel descended from the heavens with the sole purpose of singing.  There’s barely a hint of vibrato, and more power than would be estimated from her frail body. 

Her powerful instrument was on full display from the moment she appeared behind a screen, straight hair tossing as gently as the white fringe that covered her dress.  A powerful, amped-up rendition of one of my favorite songs, “When I Was a Young Girl,” got things going and for a while it was smooth sailing.  Backed by a small (but loud) band of trumpeters, guitarists, a pianist and a drummer (I’ll get to the overhead projectionists later), she plowed through a collection of her up-tempo numbers in an effort to get the packed ballroom going; it was a feat she never fully accomplished.

(Shadow Feist.)

Sure, there was the occasional romping womanager (woman who behaves like a drunk teenager) who bounced across the front of the balcony.  But she seemed like a lone cheerleader hyped up on Red Bull in a sea full of people who had been slipped ruffies.  Mid-way through the hour-and-a-half set, Feist descended into song after song chronicling heartbreak of the most wrist-cutting degree.  In a venue a quarter of the size (or on my headphones) these songs would have been revealing and poetic meditations delivered by a skilled vocalist; in the cavernous Hammerstein Ballroom they were swallowed whole. 

Perhaps most at blame for the uneven, and ultimately forgettable, evening was the venue of choice.  Feist is an artist who has passed from indie to mainstream and is therefore capable of filling larger venues, but it doesn’t mean she should.  The production of the show was so desperate to maintain its low-budget quirkiness that the enormous crowd of people seemed like a contradiction to the material being presented.

(David was jealous that I found my look alike, so he posed with Matt McConaughey.)

(Abby was even more jealous, so she posed with Mary-Louise Parker.  This picture is 100% real.  Not a bit of Photoshopping.  Abby is just...)

Guitars rotated in and out of Feist’s skilled hands, but one thing remained constant: the only occasionally charming use of an overhead projector as the main design element.  Taken straight from a third grade classroom, the projector screamed hipster-chic, and often required three or four people to operate it.  Fireworks, toe-tapping legs, or feces colored waves filled a small square of light projected on the back wall but only added to the list of things that seemed out of place in the space. 

A few high-octane songs crept into the last half of the set (a rollicking cover of Nina Simone’s “Sea Lion Woman” woke the crowd up) but as she closed the show with a trio of ballads I couldn’t help but feel a tad disappointed. 

Making our way out of the theater, Abby, David and I bemoaned the late start and recounted our disappointment at the unmemorable show.  Standing on the subway platform, I turned around to see my twin Ira Glass staring back at me from an ad for “This American Life.”  Perhaps I shall begin a career posing in subway stations next to the ads.  If I put on Feist’s album, I might be twice as lively as the concert.

(Check out a video of the proceedings above!)

Madge's Mid-Life Mania

Madonna may be almost fifty, but she wants you to know she’s still oozing sex.  She made a career on her sexually provocative image, and it isn't waning (much) with age.  Forget the fact that she’s got three pre-teens to tend to at home, when Madonna gets into the recording studio it’s all about using the dance floor as a metaphor for sexuality.  Need proof?  Check out her stellar new album, “Hard Candy,” in stores tomorrow.   

“See which flavor you like, and I’ll have it for you,” she coos on the opening track, “Candy Shop.”  After two moderately successful albums, the queen of pop is back with guns (and beats) blazing, teaming with the top hitmakers in what some may say is a desperate move to stay relevant.  Yet a few lines into the album, all sense of desperation goes out the window.  The truth of the matter is that Madonna does what she does well…and she knows it.  Regardless of how she may describe herself, she’s always been a commercial being, and she aims to please. 

By enlisting tried and true beatmakers like Pharell, Timbaland, and the go-to guy of the moment, Justin Timberlake, she ensures that she does.  These are acts that made careers out of Madonna’s impersonators.  Yet most of their collaborations find her vocals meeting with the space age blips and pulses (that are trademarks of the producers) more effortlessly than those who came before her; others may have done it first, but she’s going to do it better.  Even Timbaland’s loopy, repetitive beats, that left an imprint on many of the biggest hits of the past two years, seem revitalized here. 

Throughout the 12-tracks that make up “Hard Candy,” there’s hardly a moment to breath.  Hits come almost as rapidly as adopted babies fly into the arms of celebrities, but any subject matter that doesn’t have a place on the dance floor is left at home.  The most personal (and best track on the album) “Miles Away,” about the trials of existing in a long distance relationship, starts with the strums of an acoustic guitar but it doesn’t stay simple for long.  Scratching beats start to layer and you can practically see Madonna in a spotlight on a dance floor as she admits “You always have the biggest heart, when we’re 6000 miles apart.”  It may be about her husband Guy Ritchie, but as every pop star knows, you don’t make a hit by getting personal, you make a hit by staying universal.  It's a rare moment where the fatigue of dancing all night gives way to a true "Confession on a Dance Floor," before the synths rage back up and she reapplies her glitter in the bathroom. 

There’s nary a hint lyrically that Madonna worries about her place in the female pop genre that she practically created.  Closest is the defiant (with a hint of insecurity) “She’s Not Me,” about a woman who sees herself replaced in a relationship by someone who replicates everything from her hairstyle to her perfume.  As if to remind listeners of the most important aspect of the equation, Madonna repeats that  “She doesn’t have my name.”  True.  Britney, Christina, Rihanna…not exactly names you find in the Bible.

Gone are the days where Madonna tries to provoke with religious imagery, for now it seems there’s only room on the dance floor for her ego.  Fortunately she has the songs to back it up this time.  While there may be a few missteps (“Spanish Lessons” is a painful lesson in how to…speak Spanish), the album stays true to the refrain of one of the songs that promises, “On, and on, the beat goes.”  It’s a beat I will happily dance to and one that returns Madonna to the club-friendly music that helped shape her into the bodybuilder she is today.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?  DOES MADONNA NEED TO TONE DOWN THE SEXUALITY AS SHE GETS OLDER?