But I Don't Need to Argue Anymore -- Sound Team

I often attempt to wrangle others into the concerts I attend² but find myself rarely successful. It could easily be chalked up to the volume of my friends who identify themselves as flakes (who happen to comprise the most music-oriented and local of my friends, albeit only coincidentally), but it helps nothing--nor, I'm sure, does it help readership of a scattershot blog like this--that my tastes are unpredictable, and I look at a wide range of shows when I'm in the mood to attend them. Six years ago in October, though, I casually suggested it to a friend (one of the "flakes," oddly) that she attend a show with me, which she agreed to as it apparently was the thing for her to do that day. We were going to see Sparta (remnant of At the Drive-In, and the show where they did this) and they had a pair of opening acts with them: Lola Ray (touring on the heels of their second album, Liars) and Sound Team, a fellow (to Sparta) Texas band (Austin, not El Paso, though) who had just released their first officially recognizable and available full length, Movie Monster.

Lola Ray appealed to me via their vocals more than anything else, coming from John Balicanta. But Sound Team pulled out this furious, hypnotic drum-heavy song in the middle of their set that was instantly engaging, where the rest (like a lot of live shows where I don't know songs) sort of blurred a bit. That song was called "Shattered Glass":

No, no I don't know why it was coupled to an image of Steve Martin ironing a kitten.

Do You Remember What the Music Meant to You? To Me? -- Pretty Girls Make Graves

Only once in a great while do I get in on the ground floor of an act. It's rare, because I wander in too many directions at once to focus long enough to expand completely on any direction. A new band in a genre, or from a label is a rarity for me, because I'm too stuck on each band or artist I start myself on. The exceptions generally come from two places: opening acts at live shows (I can happily note that I knew OK Go before their famous treadmill dance video, before they were even signed, for that matter) or when a band breaks up and I catch wind of what this or that member happens to be doing. There was no moment better for this than the early 2000's as I was leaving high school. My two new favourite bands, At the Drive-In and The Murder City Devils both broke up, and I was too much a neophyte to music in general to yet be overwhelmed, so when I heard about side projects, it actually connected and stuck. While At the Drive-In turned into The Mars Volta and Sparta, The Murder City Devils seemed to generally dissipate quite completely. Briefly, vocalist Spencer Moody, drummer Coady Willis, and guitarist Nate Manny formed a band named Dead Low Tide, releasing an EP, seeming pretty quiet and then breaking up, only then putting out their self-titled full-length.

A little more on the side, MCD bassist Derek Fudesco had reunited with Andrea Zollo (who you may remember did backing vocals for the Devils once or twice) to form Pretty Girls Make Graves, named for the Smiths song (in turned name for a Kerouac quote). Like Dead Low Tide--and thus mirroring the At the Drive-In descendants movements, EPs first--Pretty Girls released a self-titled EP of four songs in 2001. Following shortly thereafter was the debut full-length, Good Health, on April 9th, 2002. Apparently major indie label Matador took over the album's distribution sometime (from original label Lookout! Records) and dropped the EP on it, which is news to me and means my failure to ever collect the original EP in physical form might be rectified more simply.

This is where I really come into the story, which is silly considering this is my story (in a sense), but nevermind that. Once again, eMusic played a big role in this--Lookout! was one of the labels working with eMusic at the time (at one point I suggested the place to label Kranky, but they told me, in some of the nicest e-mails I ever got, that it simply wasn't financially viable, which made me want to buy more of their releases) and so I downloaded my legal copy of Good Health with a shrug one day in college and listened to it. Then immediately listened to it again. I was kind of in awe: normally I'm not one for immediate impressions (indeed, anyone who reads many entries will know this, and my recall that at the time I made brief mention of this album). At the Gates' Slaughter of the Soul, though I came to it during what I'm told was a glut of Swedish-styled melodic death metal, was another that I listened to again immediately as its hooks went in without hesitation.

What's the Point of Holding on to What Never Gets Used? (Or: Why Negative Reviewing Does Not Belong Here)

While I am unsurprised that my least acknowledged post continues to be my confused and rambling "mission statement" (I mean, it has no pictures or music!), there's something to the whole idea. If I had to stop the rambling and confusion and take it to a single sentence: I want to talk about the good, the peculiar and the interesting in music.

I thought of this as I was listening to limbo band (somewhere between independent and 'mainstream,' and with derision and praise arriving from either end) the Whigs. I was attempting to decipher a word here or there in the song "So Lonely,"¹ and I couldn't actually find the lyrics posted anywhere, which is relatively unusual for a band on ATO Records (a division of RCA) and all. They've released two albums, no less, both even distributed on vinyl (indeed, because it was a ridiculously good deal for including the actual CD, I have the vinyl of Mission Control), meaning there's some force behind them.

What I did find were a bunch of dismissive reviews, quoting the lyrics I was attempting to filter by as means to decry the band as "cliché-ridden" or derivative (though I did also find a brief entry on one blog from someone who stumbled into the song after liking their first album and losing track). The two foremost reviews--which quote the chorus of "So Lonely"--are from PopMatters and SputnikMusic, sites I've run across in the past, though I admit that I really don't read reviews too much, unless I'm feeling anxious about a new album from a band I already like.

Now, just to give us a frame of reference before I launch into the whole point of this entry, here's that song and its accompanying video: