Whoagina!!!

5.27.10

3:55 pm

Quite a bit of music rambling today, so, if you're deaf...heh heh heh...the pillow talk was a bitch...Jesus...

Anyway, you might want to tune out.

First off, it turns out at least one of my predictions for the new eels album, "Tomorrow Morning", has come true as they posted the cover art and tracklisting last night.

The album will have 14 tracks.

And, something about the tracklisting makes me think my vision about all the songs being spares is also true.

Whereas the majority of the songs on "End Times" (the one about E's personal apocalypse with this girl) were all about how horrible life is without this girl and how there's no point in living anymore and how could this happen to me and no one should be happy and HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TO ME?!, the titles (haven't heard a note of the new one, but that's why they're called predictions and not postdictions) of the new one are ridiculously optimistic and twee.

Titles like "Spectacular Girl", "I Like The Way This Is Going", "In Gratitude For This Magnificent Day", "Looking Up", "This Is Where It Gets Good" and "I'm A Hummingbird".

Now, I mentioned these song titles to Chris last night, and she suggested they were probably tongue-in-cheek, as E tends to be all the time, but, based on the simple, straightforward nature of the last two albums (of which this one is, again, the third and final installation), I fear they might be just as straightforward and just as deep as their titles.

And that blows.

See, it blows because, way back in 1998, eels put out "Electro-Shock Blues", which was all about E dealing with the personal apocalypse of pretty much his entire family dying and his being left all alone in the world and it was fucking amazing.

It was bittersweet, thickly layered with all types of great melodies, instruments, styles and, the best part, it wasn't a huge downer, it had hope laced throughout.

And it wasn't obvious.

It's truly a fantastic work.

And, at the end of it, pretty much everyone, including E thought he was going to kill himself.

Then, he released "Daises of the Galaxy"; sonically, it was (mostly) airy and simple, acoustic guitars and not much else at times, the lyrics, however, were as double sided as ever, this album was about hope and the future, but it addressed that there might be trouble on the horizon: you just never know.

The overall feeling was about how things are getting better and he's going to be okay.

ESB was him dealing with the tragedy and Daises was him moving on with his life, scarred, limping, but looking toward the future and what it might hold for him.

So, you see, he's done the "crushing apocalypse/things might get better" album set before, but better.

People were actually comparing "End Times" to "Electro-Shock Blues".

I'll agree, as long as we're talking about the fact that both are written in and regarding dark times in E's life, but that's it.

Listening to ESB is like living parts of his life, seeing into his soul and watching him relive these tragedies as they happen in his mind, again and again. Hearing his inner-most thoughts and then watching him put on a stone face and make snide comments about some aspect of this, trying to distract people from what he's really feeling.

Listening to "End Times" is like trying to have a conversation with someone while the drunk guy at the end of the bar is telling you how shitty his life is now that's he's divorced; some times he's mumbling, sometimes he's crying, sometimes he's yelling, but the whole time you wish he'd just shut up or change the script.

So, as I said before, I don't hold a lot of hope for "Tomorrow Morning", as I fear it's going to be a pale, wispy shadow of "Daises of the Galaxy" just as "End Times" was a pale, wispy shadow of "Electro-Shock Blues".

The only up side if I'm, sadly (I obviously don't want the album to suck...), right, at least this trilogy of errors will be over and E can move on, although I doubt we're going to see another period of productivity from him for a while.

Man, it's always a catch 22: you get a great album every five years or three sub-par ones in a year and a half.

I've just had a realization: As impatient as I am, I would rather have a great, instant classic album every four years or so than a meh-fest once a year.

I do not want all my favorite bands to become Prince.

Okay, next, I was alerted today on Beck's site that he guests on the new Tobacco album, "Maniac Meat".*

Tobacco is what I shall call "dirty dick dance music".

It's the music you put on when you've been in your house for about a week without a shower, your entire body is covered with a light sheen of grease and you've gone out of your mind.

You'd hear it at a strip club where the girls, while very attractive, are all missing toes or wearing prosthetic limbs.

And you can't turn it down because there's semen on the knob.

THAT is Tobacco.

I dug their most recent album, "Fucked Up Friends" very much because I'd never heard anything like it. It was so well done and compelling and filthy.

What they're doing to music should be illegal.

The new one isn't as great as FUF (although I'm not totally though it yet), but it's still hard not to want to slip my penis into the pockets of strangers while listening to it.

I highly recommend it for the next time you're having sex in a bathroom stall.

And finally, because we're all angry and tired here: turns out the thing that HTDA was teasing us with was its involvement in Wired's first iPad issue.

In the (non-electronic) paper version, there was an article about how the band constructed their song "The Believers". If you got the iPad edition, you could hear the song while reading the article.

Oh Trenty sure loves his technology!!!!!!

Minutes after this came out, someone had hacked the thing and put the mp3 up on a torrent site.

Unlike what I had expected, it does NOT sound very much like the other two tracks from the EP OR even all that Nine Inch Nails-y (except for the marimbas).

Some Beck-ish aspects about it at times, actually.

It sounds like electronic ceremonial Aztec music.

One could cobble a video together with selected scenes from "Apocalyptico" and scenes from episodes of "Big Love" that take place on the Compound, maybe some Waco footage thrown in for that "real" edge.

It has a hypnotic beat which works very well with the cultish, mantra-like lyrics.

The vocals are husked, barely audible over the clanging, by Mariqueen, and, even more barely audible, breathed by Reznor.

It's not my favorite track off the EP (of which they've put out half, in various formats, in the past month), but that doesn't worry.

This is a fun little project and (duh) I'm looking forward to hearing the full album from these folks.

All right, I think that's about it.

Now I'm going to sit quietly and try not to commit a hate crime on the most annoying person in this universe.

WISH ME LUCK!!!!!!

LOLLERSKATES!!!!!111!!1

KTHXBYE!!!!!

  

*Maybe one of the best album titles I've heard all year, and the album art goes right along with it.