Elephant Talk

I’ve been listening to a lot of Wilco lately. Four months ago or so I didn’t have a single album. But so many of my friends praised them up and down that I had to give them another shot.

I tried once before, somewhere around 2002. That’s when everyone was talking about them. Their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album was the cause de celebré for the independent minded youth of the digital age. It was a triumph of art over commerce. They were the band that stuck it to The MAN. Of course, that was all I heard about. Nobody seemed to mention the music. I hate that kind of media-generated buzz, so I had no interest in getting to know them.

But one day I was driving around Palo Alto with my girlfriend at the time. She was more curious than I was so she bought the album. OK, sure, let’s give it a shot. So she put the CD in the car stereo. Thirty seconds into it, I knew I hated it. Once I heard that sad-sack voice I thought “God no, not another self-emasculaed, indie whiner please.” Two minutes into it I couldn’t take it anymore. I begged her to turn it the hell off. My preconceptions were confirmed: Of course the critics loved them, I thought. These guys hate themselves. They fit perfectly into that drab, post-punk attitude where you have to sound like you don’t care. Critics love that shit. I can’t fucking stand it.

Fast-forward some five or six years into the future, to March 2008. I went with a group of friends to the Korean countryside for some fresh air and to climb a mountain. It had been raining the whole drive up and that night. When we woke up the next morning I opened the curtains and looked outside. The trees were dripping with last night’s rain, the hotel pavement was soaked. But it looked like the weather was going to break and we could climb that mountain.

And then someone put on some music. I heard this really nice, mellow guitar, and then the singer sang the first lines: “Maybe the sun will shine today. The clouds will blow away. Maybe I won’t feel so afraid…” Wait a minute, who’s this? Wilco. First song off their most recent album, Sky Blue Sky. I loved it. It was pretty, it was mellow, the singer was really singing, the mix was beautiful, and it was a great song. In short, it was everything my first experience was not.

And that’s Wilco. There’s a reason every website’s favorite adjective for them is “interesting.” As evidence of this, everyone I know who is a fan has a different preferred phase, a different favorite album. My friend in Pittsburgh thought nothing was ever quite the same after A.M. The bass player in my band prefers Being There. One of the guitarists in my band likes Summerteeth best. The other guitarist swears by A Ghost Is Born. His girlfriend digs Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I, to this day, still prefer Sky Blue Sky by a mile.

Before I dig into my praise of them, and of that album in particular, I gotta get something off my chest.
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We only get the major blockbuster US movies here in Busan, which means we get a lot of crap. But it also means we get all the big animated films, which are most definitely not crap. Kung-fu Panda, for example, was not only a laugh-out-loud riot, it was also beautifully made.

The new Pixar movie, Wall-E, sounds really interesting. In particular, I was intrigued by this little bit about the approach to dialogue:

Throughout the film, the lead characters, and most of the robots they encounter, utter not a single word of traditional dialogue. (There is ooooing, eeeping and beeping.) It’s yet another variation from previous Pixar films in which toys, rats, fish and bugs all have talked - and talked smart.

Still, Stanton says, “there’s dialogue from Frame One. It’s just unconventional dialogue.

“I knew this was a big bite to chew, and it had been a long, long time since someone tried to do a film with this unconventional dialogue in it. I kept saying, ‘It’s like I’m trying to do R2-D2 the Movie.’ I kept using that phrase so many times that one of my producers said, ‘Why don’t you just call Ben Burtt,’ ” the legendary audio and sound man who was the “voice” of R2-D2.

“So I called him and asked him if he could sign on early and help me with dialogue for these characters and grammar for each of the characters,” Stanton says.

“Now that I’m on the back end of working with him for two years, I realize that was the smartest move I ever made. I got 25 years of knowledge of how to do this stuff. He’s just the master of it, and I don’t think I could solved [sic] it without him.”

I’ve been waiting for something like this. Movies tend to “talk” very fast and too much, but I’m always fascinated by those that strip away the need to explain everything. A film like The New World, for example, is a great love story even though the main characters barely speak to each other. Another is Triplets of Belleville. What little language it has is unnecessary. This requires a filmmaker to be more creative in storytelling.

And of course, the other reason I like films without little or no dialogue is that I have more examples I can show in class.

Edit (June 24): Here’s the trailer… looks and sounds great!

It’s Friday, time for a little music appreciation…

The whole idea of a “favorite band” is kind of silly. I like far too many styles of music to have one, although if forced I could probably narrow it down to two. But my deep admiration and enjoyment of Iron & Wine has gone on long enough, so it’s time to push that number to three.

Iron & Wine is actually one guy named Sam Beam (joined occasionally by his sister on harmony vocals) so it makes pronouns challenging. I think what I find so impressive is how he’s able to craft songs that have a consistency of emotion, but wrapped in always changing production styles. His career is still fairly new, and I get the sense that he’s in the middle of something that will eventually be considered extraordinary.

There are only three Iron & Wine albums, plus a handful of EPs. The first album The Creek Drank The Cradle was produced and recorded solely by Sam. The style was very distinct: acoustic instruments such as guitars, banjos and slide, and a very close-miked whispering vocal. It was a lo-fi affair, with an intimate quality. But at the same time, there was something deep and spooky going on in the lyrics and mood.

Here’s one of my favorite songs, “Faded From the Winter”:

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There are loudspeakers everywhere in Busan: In my office, at the beach, on mobile trucks — even in my apartment. Every couple of weeks or so, a message comes pumping through my apartment speaker. A droll voice will murmur something: “muh-muh-muh-muuuhhhh…. muh-muuuhh-mu-ma…” I never know what they’re saying, but half the time it eventually becomes clear to me. I’ll turn on the faucet and nothing will come out, or my shower won’t heat up, or someone starts drilling into the apartment building.

This morning I got two messages. I haven’t figured out what the deal is today. But it got me thinking: If North Korea attacks, I’ll be blissfully ignorant, munching on a stack of Pringles and watching Battlestar Galactica and then, boom, it’s all over. This also goes for zombie attacks. I should learn the Korean word for “zombie” just in case.

American voters are idiots. They’ve — we’ve — proven that over the past two presidential terms. And we’re keeping the trend going into this primary process. When I say “idiots,” I don’t only mean uninformed, myopic and misguided. Yes, there is that, and Europeans love to remind me of that all the time. But more to the point, Americans are idiots because they allow themselves to be manipulated by what the media suggests — through repetition and a thirst for ratings — is important. They’re suckers.

Here’s a quote from an article in the International Herald Tribune, from a grocery store food stocker in Maryland: “It’s the stuff about his preacher … and the thing he said about Pennsylvania towns, how they turn to religion.” …the stuff about his preacher. You’re not supporting Obama because of the stuff about his preacher? Stuff about his preacher, what the hell does that mean? Where’s your focus? You’ve merely taken what the media has scandalized and made it your own thoughts and opinions. You, sir, are a dumbass.

What is it about Jeremiah Wright that so concerns you? Hmmm, let me take a guess: He’s black and angry. He’s not Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You’re only comfortable seeing eloquence from your black people; this angry stuff scares you. You’re already thinking, somewhere in the back of your mind: hey wait a minute, Obama’s black too, maybe he’s secretly angry too because he’s friends with Rev. Wright.

They’re different people. He’s not Obama, he’s Obama’s preacher. I bet this numbskull from Maryland has a buddy who maybe drinks a little too much and says the wrong things at poker night sometimes. But he’s still your buddy. It’s the same thing here. The only difference is it’s broadcast on television, and it’s repeated, and commentators freak the fuck out and then you say “Oh my god, I must now freak out! This is truly freak-out-able!”

I guess this was bound to happen at some point. The fears of Americans, in this case racial fears, eventually winning out. Even if Obama wins the nomination, which is likely, this will stick with him in the general election. The tragedy will be a loss to McCain because Obama was hurt by what someone else said. Stupid.

This is the way it goes. Howard Dean was the great hope of the democratic party four years ago. He lost to milquetoast John Kerry because Dean overmodulated a broadcast signal because the crowd around him was so loud. That broadcast wormed its way into everyone’s heads and we got a dope for a candidate.

The media loves to repeat itself. So does history.

I feel like I’m not doing enough. I’m extremely gifted at wasting time when left to my own whims. I need some structure, like an organization, or a group of some kind, something I need to attend on a regular basis.

I’m sitting here in my office and there are some crazy, crazy sounds going on outside. It’s a huge traditional Korean drum group and it’s absolutely insane, like a manic Steve Tibbetts song without the guitars. There’s something about the combination of pitched metal and booming skins in seriously whacked out arrangements. I love it. Maybe I should try to join a group. I wouldn’t be able to understand what anyone’s saying, but I could still learn. I should look into it.

I also need to look into getting this abnormal growth removed from my jaw. But the thought of actually doing that terrifies me.

I wish everyone reading this could hear what I’m hearing now. It’s the sound of insanity, my insanity.

Just outside my window, about 150 meters away, I can see them. They’re all dressed in their colored militant garb, dancing and waving with their white gloves in unison. There’s that one guy again, dressed up in traditional Korean clothes, bowing and waving, bowing and waving, bowing and waving. And there on the stage, that’s the asshole, the motherfucker I who won’t shut the fuck up. He yells like Hitler through the narrow-bandwidth PA system, tuned perfectly to those frequencies meant specifically to annoy, to beat you aurally into submission until you say “OK, OK, I’ve had enough! Make it stop and I’ll vote for you for fuck’s sake just make it stop!!”

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I’m a little late with this — the semester starting this week and all, plus coping with a particularly vicious hangover — but I finally got around to watching the most recent episode of Lost (”Constant”). Five minutes into it, this overwhelming sense of joy hit me. Finally, after all my lame guesses that always turn out wrong, I managed to get something right, and it’s a big one.

As always, unless you’re caught up with Season 4, don’t continue reading…

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When I was 25 or so, I had this fear that when I turned 30 I’d run out of music to listen to. That hasn’t happened, and I’m well past 30.

Just when I think I’m in danger of a getting into a rut, I find new things. I was going through an introspective, indie-ish, acoustic singer-songwriter thing for the past year or so (still am to some degree). My new thing is something I can’t quite describe, so I’ll name some bands instead: Hammock, Explosions In The Sky, God Is An Astronaut, Sigur Ros, This Will Destroy You, etc. What do you call that? I’ve been seeing it lumped into the “post-rock” genre, but I don’t hear it. Post-rock is more shifting and varied, with styles and moods borrowed from many genres and crafted into interesting compositions. I’ve also seen it compared to shoegazer music. It’s close, but not as poppy. Space rock? No, that’s not right either. Emo? I still don’t know what the hell that is and I don’t really care to.

I’m going to call it by my own name: Spacegazer music. It’s got qualities of shoegazer, but thematically, it seems to be looking into the heavens rather than down at the floor.

Here are a few juicy tidbits. First, my favorite song in the world right now:

God Is An Astronaut (he is, you know…):

Sigur Ros isn’t my favorite band in the world. Sometimes the singer gets to be a bit much, and his melodies have a kind of sameness to them. But I absolutely love this song:

Bjork came to play Seoul Saturday. I want to say she kicked ass, but those words are meaningless, even though there was much ass being kicked. So I have to try some other words. She was chilling, enrapturing, transcendent, violent, otherworldly, mad as a fucking loon. It was as if she put her hands on the microphone and sent a shockwave of electricity through the whole arena.

This was the second time I’d seen her. The first time was the Vespertine tour stop in Oakland. My girlfriend at the time used her contacts to score us 10th row seats. That show was pretty mindblowing as well, but it was also tainted by me and her being in the process of a breakup, and we had a brief but highly public fight in the lobby right before the show went on. Anyway, the mood in that performance was ethereal, sensual, and restrained. If memory serves, I believe she had a choir and Matmos (two guys with Macintoshes), and that was it.

The show in Seoul was the opposite. It was all out highly charged energy, even during the slower parts. When the lights came down, out walked a dozen or so brass players in strange, anti-elfin uniforms, with tiny flags perched atop their heads. The rest of the band came out — including a keyboard player, two programmers, and a drummer — and then Bjork herself. I can’t for the life of me figure out what she was wearing, some golden explosion of unearthly fabric. The stage was similarly cosmic. Well, not quite cosmic, but if Tolkien did post-apocalyptic rather than pre-civilization, it might look something like this. It all had a slightly militant quality to it, with brightly colored flags and tapestries depicting icons of unknown culture (no doubt in reference to “Declare Independence”).

During the first song, the lighting was bad, and it seemed the front-of-house mixer was trying to properly place her voice in the room. But when she kicked into “Hunter,” the second song, everything clicked. And then, when she belted out “how Scandinavian of me,” my head almost exploded. She sounded inhuman. No voice in the known world should be able to produce such sound. Some sort of strange vibration hit me and a shudder spread from my spine throughout my whole body. Right in that moment I thought, okay, this isn’t Vespertine. This will be a different experience altogether.

The whole show continued like this, with wave after wave of euphoria. Her band sounded great – except her drummer, but I’m not in the mood to criticize. I really like what she’s doing with brass arrangements, both in the live show and in the new album Volta. Some of my friends weren’t into the computer stuff, but I loved it. She’s a brilliant sound designer, with an equal appreciation for texture and outright noise. But what we all kept talking about after the show was her voice. She sounds great on recordings, but it’s almost as if recording technology is incapable of handling a force that it’s never had to deal with before. Something else entirely was happening here; it was as if she were released from a cage. She was Brahma and Shiva all at once, roaming around simultaneously creating and destroying with that voice of hers. Absolutely incredible.

So yes, the show was… indescribable. But I’m not done describing, because the whole Seoul weekend was interesting. I’ll post a follow-up soon.