Woodward, on their second LP, the defensively titled But Your Kids Are Gonna Love It, appear to hail from Anytown, USA. The songs, generally, are neither good nor bad; neither engaging nor uninteresting. The band appears to be committing the crime of being generic. Power chords, electric guitar solos, keyboards, vox in multiple harmony, bass protuberant: this is the strain of rock n roll that does not roll. “Did I?,” for example, tears along nicely musically, but – and it took a while to be aware of this – the vocals, with exuberance, are so high atop the mix and writing of the material itself that there is no room to roll. To swagger. Imagine a calm, lounging, subdued vocal floating beneath this song’s admittedly rocking verses. The contrast in my imagination is sublime.
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The October 2008 issue of Paste magazine featured a review of Cold War Kids’ new LP, Loyalty to Loyalty, written by Bart Blasengame. Boldly, the review did not mention the Kids’ new LP in its first paragraph. Instead, a state of the art (or a state of the consumers of the art) from Blasengame:
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That the youthful audience was so plentiful for the Toadies November 6 show in Manhattan’s Webster Hall was mildly surprising. That so many of them knew the lyrics to songs I had come of age to was sublime. Opening the evening with the taunting quick riffs of 1994’s Rubberneck (specifically “Mexican Hairless”), the Toadies did for 90 minutes what their LP’s do so consistently it becomes hard to perceive: play fast, melodic rock songs, violent with melody.
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In March of 2001 the Toadies released their second LP, Hell Below/Stars Above, six years after their debut, Rubberneck. Hell Below was a darker (somehow) and more intricate use of the band’s energies and bandleader Todd Lewis’ endless exuberant rage, though by this time nobody cared. Seven years – and at least one official disbanding – later, the Toadies’ third LP, No Deliverance, reverts back to the fast, choppy riffs characteristic of Rubberneck.
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This is all chase. Violins drawing out notes, electric guitar picking chords, piano keys eloquent, synth sustaining the vibrant persistent hum. The songs on Sian Alice Group’s debut LP, 59.59, gnaw at the listener like a receding toothache or a descending revelation. The album’s opening moments are lovely splurts and blurbs of matter, eventually taking form in a plucked guitar chord. The LP’s four Interludes include fun with wood on glass (tink tink glick glink); “Interlude 7’35”” is a beautiful meandering piano with a steady firmament of synth, and if I didn’t know any better I would say it wasn’t a song at all. The remaining two Interludes (19’39” & 46’51”) are an underwater narcotic and the birds chirping at the close of “When…” must be a joke: if this is a daytime record it is through the shocking haze of opiates.
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“I hear the ambulance towards you.” A woman somewhere on Broadway said this into her cell phone as I made my way to the Knitting Factory. Halloween in New York City was busy; and if you weren’t in costume, those who were let you know what they thought about it. Happily, the Factory’s bands (save opener Ortolon) put forth the costuming effort and the audience only listened.
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When the Dandy Warhols began playing “Bohemian Like You” midway through the set, it struck me how very long this band has been in my life. I began to imagine all of the used cars, diners, lawns and parking lots I came of age in, the Dandy’s serenading my hedonism from the car’s open windows. I thought of how loving a piece of artwork has much to do with loving the time in your life occupied by that artwork. Then the Dandy’s fucked up and – with steel balls –started the song over.
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The rising moon looks like it doesn’t feel very well. – Infinite Jest

On Friday, September 12, 2008, novelist, essayist, professor David Foster Wallace hung himself in his home in Claremont, California. 46 years old, Wallace’s literary achievements included the enormous novel Infinite Jest as well as short story collections Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Oblivion; and essay collections Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.
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