Splodge

Who likes Jens Lekman?

2007-06-07T22:07:00.000+10:00

If you look at Google Trends to find out how popular someone is on their searches, it also lists the top 10 cities for that search item. When you plug "Jens Lekman" into it, guess who loves him most? Well, obviously, there's Sweden, where he's from, but after the top 5 being Swedish cities, you have New York. Fine. Lots of music-savvy people. Next? Melbourne. Then Perth, and Sydney. He's onto something over here I think.

Tours it sucks you missed #1

2007-05-28T13:48:00.000+10:00

In 1999 Jimmy Eat World went on tour supported by Jets to Brazil and Pedro the Lion. All of the above are/were awesome parts of the 90s indie/emo scene. None of this eyeliner crap. Just sweet music.

Here's a video of my favourite Jets to Brazil song, I Typed for Miles. It's pretty bad quality sound but the song is great, especially towards the end.

Pedro the Lion's song Options:

muscles

2007-04-19T01:50:00.000+10:00

I have to say I'm loving this guy's music right now. His creativity in forming sweet tunes and beats and vocal stuff has overcome my natural reaction against music with techno/house sounds. Ice Cream (audible on jjj) is one you may have heard. It's semi-restrained, dance-imperative, deliberate electronic music with a penchant for the word officially spelt as wooo but with the variations of whoa, woot, wooh, and if you're getting really picky, woo.

Muscles (real name top secret), a country boy in Melbourne, has gone from unknown to the global poster child of hyphenated post-modern electro-dance music, within a year. In Mess + Noise around July or August last year there was a feature on this unknown aspirational kid, probably around my age, who the writer thought was a bit eccentric and whose world-domination ambitions were not thought to be likely to succeed, even though he was trying really hard. I mentioned him on splodge in August, and ended up being just the fourth little review excerpt he stuck in his review column on his website. Fluxblog, one of the internet's mp3 blog barons, beat me by a month. But less than a year later Muscles has 5000 imaginary Myspace friends, in November he passed 10000 page views, and to date there have been around 80000 plays of his few songs that he's got up there. Triple J is head over heels for him and he's gone off to America to tour for a little while with Soulwax and 2manyDJs who I think both have something to do with dance music. Those sort of people.

How did he do this? In the M+N article his aspiration was to be a superstar, something like that. That he'd work at it even if it took decades. This guy is hardcore. He used to offer to send a promo CD of his songs to anyone who asked. Right now he asks for anyone to send him 'cds and stuff if you're in a band or a dj who makes mixes, im always looking for new music and bands to play with!' This is one enthusiastic guy. Persistent too.

But how long will it be before he is over-lauded on Pitchfork as the messiah from Melbourne, and how long after that that they surgically cut him down to size, and how long after that that the British poparazzi fawn and drool over him and his relationship prospects, and how long after that that he becomes a coked up vegetable propping up southern California's rehab industry? Huh? Hopefully the plot won't unfold like this. This is a guy who sings about the simple pleasures in life- badges, lemonade, finding common ground with an acquaintance through shared musical tastes, ice cream, and riding on the train. Not only that, he seems cluey, with some nous and good judgment. He refuses to accept people as Myspace friends if they "have an annoying background that takes ages to load, transparent objects on your myspace, or 'special' characters in your name, you will not recieve a 'wooo' therefore not worthy of befriending muscles." I respect that. And so should you.

Muscles Website
Muscles Myspace
Mess + Noise article

setlist

2007-03-04T15:41:00.000+11:00

The setlist for Sodastream's last ever show:

Firelines
Out
Keith & Tina
Chorus Line
Horses
Charity Board
Fresh One
Wedding Day
Let it all Turn Black
Warm July
Lushington Hall
Otherwise Open
Blinky
Constant Ships
Mood in the Bunker

I feel a need to record all of this for posterity... i'll do a review soon.

Sodastream ends

2007-03-03T02:01:00.000+11:00

The Elevator Music King

2007-03-01T20:50:00.000+11:00

So in Bangkok I bought a CD called The Jazz King, of jazz music composed by King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand. And I was listening to it, and it just didn't sound right. It sounded weird. And then, after seven tracks, I figured it out. It's not really jazz music. It's elevator music. You know, that awful stuff they put over tourism promotional videos, with too-smooth melodies and a beat that belongs in a Vegas hotel in 1992.

mewithoutYou - Brother, Sister

2007-02-24T16:26:00.000+11:00

So I first heard this whole album on a dark night in Istanbul, and I bought it this week. In short, it is awesome. It's sort of indie-rock 'post-hardcore' arty-farty music with spoken-word poetry/singing/wailing. It goes from soft to chaotic, from English to Arabic (in one song), from understandable to confusing. Sound stupid? It's not. Listen to them here.

Dir En Grey

2007-02-21T11:48:00.000+11:00

Well I came across the infamous Dir En Grey on Purevolume, and it looks like they've turned hardcore, after their previous incarnation as self-pitying wrist-slitting whinge-rock. Have a listen to Clever Sleazoid.

my Hottest 100 votes

2007-01-06T19:40:00.000+11:00

After much deliberation, and culling of my 60-song shortlist, these are the 10 extra-special songs I voted for.

Antiskeptic - Dancing On The Inside
Just great.

Ben Folds - Such Great Heights (Like A Version)
Sweet piano take on Postal Service's song.

Jens Lekman - Your Arms Around Me
What can I say? Jens is awesome.

Justice Vs Simian - We Are Your Friends
So I am I. The video was one of the year's best.

Muscles - One Inch Badge Pin
Nice, very nice.

Panic! At The Disco - The Only Difference Between Martyrdom & Suicide
The best song off one of, if not THE, album of the year.

Peter Bjorn & John - Let's Call It Off
This one makes me want to jive.

Sodastream - Twin Lakes
I love Sodastream.

Youth Group - Forever Young
This song means 2006.

The Zutons - Why Won't You Give Me Your Love
The dance-fighting gangs of this song's video are awesome.

back from the dead

2006-12-14T19:00:00.000+11:00

Noun 1. splodge - an irregularly shaped spot

I'll start by putting up some archives of previous posts.

Creed's perspective

2006-09-23T01:00:00.000+10:00

One of the most satisfying CD purchases of my recent past (ie. the last fortnight) is My Own Prison, by everyone's favourite turn-of-the-millenium band, Creed. Of course, I am aware of how incredibly daggy Creed is these days. No self-respecting music critic will ever admit to any sort of appreciation for Creed, apart from their appreciation of Creed's uncanny ability to write dreary, middle-of-the-road, pseudo-spiritual, post-Pearl Jam, commercial rock-radio shite that millions of people were suckers for.

But I am so happy to be in possession of their debut album because it is the completion of my Creed collection. Apart from the superfluous Greatest Hits that was rushed out last year to try to wring a few more dollars out of the Creed fans now turned Nickelback fans, I've now got the set. And My Own Prison is up there with Human Clay and Weathered.

As I wrote this I was trying to decide if I think Human Clay is Creed's best work. And I was thinking 'Yeah, I'll say that Human Clay is still the best, but My Own Prison comes pretty damn close.' But then, I realised that as I was just listening to My Own Prison, I didn't have to put up with those over-played icons of 2000, Higher and With Arms Wide Open. While they are nice pieces of inspirational ambiguity, I like that the only songs on My Own Prison that I've heard before are the ones I eagerly downloaded on Napster back in Year 10. Still, there are great songs on Human Clay, so I'm wavering. Maybe I'll make them even. And it's common knowledge that Weathered, the third album, is not their best. There's not much distance between best and worst on the Creed spectrum, it's just a matter of where you place that spectrum within your own scale of music taste.

Creed, in their eight years and three albums, sold around 30 million CDs around the world, most of those in America. What is it that particularly endeared this band to the consciousness of the western world those few years ago? Why that combination of notes, chords, bad distortion, and lyrical mix of disenchantedness and hope?

I think that Creed resonated with so many people because firstly, it was a slightly different Pearl Jam, with some big, fat redneck southern chords that were part of the post-grunge, pre-nu-metal sound. But that's still a just a musical reason. What differentiated Creed from the Pearl Jams of the world? I think it's because their message resonated with a generation who knew conservative Christian values, but had questioned them and rejected them. I think this was especially true in America, and a bit less so in other parts of the world.

Also, among Christians, Creed was fairly popular due to the fact that they were a 'secular' rock band that Christians could listen to without feeling bad, because they sang songs with a lot of allusions to Christian themes. A Christian could feel cool because they were listening to the most popular band in the world, while not feeling guilty, because the band were 'Christian' enough.

Now consider this: Scott Stapp, Creed's songwriter and singer, grew up as the son of a fire-and-brimstone pentecostal pastor who would beat him, becoming disillusioned with Christianity as he grew up. This is the gist of the story. This disillusionment seems to be particularly with a hypocritical, 'cultural Christian' type of Christianity- the kind that says because you're American you're Christian, and vice versa.

And so the way this perspective informed Creed's music must be taken into account. The song In America, from My Own Prison, seems to illustrate Stapp's stance:

Only in America we're slaves to be free
Only in America we kill the unborn to make ends meet
Only in America sexuality is democracy
Only in America we stamp our god "In God We Trust"

Not surprisingly, with this disillusionment with what many call truth, there is a certain search for truth in their music, that often ends in a place of ambiguity. The chorus to the song goes like this:

What is right or wrong?
I don't know who to believe in
My soul sings a different song
In America
I am right and you are wrong
No one's right and no one's wrong
In America

This resolution of ambiguous truth is one that many good post-modernists today would applaud. Yet Stapp isn't singing this in a joyful, Polyphonic Spree-esque celebration of fluffy ambiguity. Stapp is angry. This isn't a resolution- he wants the truth. He wants to know right and wrong. He wants people to know right and wrong. This resonates with those people from a Christian background, with a respect for truth and a sense of moral right and wrong. This is indicative of his respect for a lot of conservative Christian values, despite rejecting Christianity.

It seems that one of his major problems with Christianity and the church was hypocrisy he'd seen, and which many others of his generation would understand. So comes the second verse:

Church bell's ringing
Pass the plate around
The choir is singing
As their leader falls to the ground
Please mister prophet man [is he talking to Jesus or the pastor?]
Tell me which way to go
I gave my last dollar
Can I still come to your show?

I wouldn't say Creed are post-Christian in their perspective- more pseudo-Christian than anything. Alluding to Christian themes without using any definitive words, especially evident on the Human Clay album, but not rejecting those views completely either.

Plenty of people, especially the media, wanted to label Creed a 'Christian band', and the Stapp would flatly deny that, but at different times would have varying answers. There was the 'I used to be a Christian, but not anymore' line and the avoid-giving-any-definite-answer line. Scott Stapp didn't talk about being a Christian until this interview in 2004, after Creed had finished, when he said he had "come full circle" spiritually.

So it's likely he does not still hold all the views he espoused while fronting Creed. Nevertheless, it seems like Creed's message resonated with people partly because of that pseudo-Christian viewpoint.