A review of Beck's "Colors"

All right, I'm going to get weird here for a moment. I do not consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but since the direction of Beck's follow up to Morning Phase has slowly come to light over the past three years, I have developed what one might call a "conspiracy theory"*...and here it is...

After Beck won the Grammy in 2015 and was rewarded by Kayne's cuntishness and a legion of ill-informed children tweeting #WhoIsBeck, I believe he had a thought. I believe his thought was to make an album so accessible and so mainstream as to show these twenty-somethings exactly who he was and what he was capable of. He sat down and looked at what he had lying around** and saw a bunch of stuff he did with super-mainstream, finger-on-the-pulse producer and former keyboardist, Greg Kurstin. This stuff was as far from the somber beauty of Morning Phase as Beck had been perhaps since 1999's Midnite Vultures and it was accessible as fuck. The plan started there.
Beck went on to make songs as commercial and radio-friendly as he was able, dusting them with just a hint of the funk and weirdness he is so adept at, but not too much funk or weirdness, got to keep this appealing to the masses, always think of the masses. If Morning Phase was the spiritual sequel to 2002's Sea Change, a complete work for musicians and people who loved intricate and challenging music that pays dividends after repeat listens, then this new one was going to be for the Playlist People, the Shuffleheads, those who like songs but not albums because who has forty minutes to listen to anything? To someone in their twenties, forty minutes is the equivalent of four hundred years. That is a fact created by combining math and science.***
At one point, and here's where things get uber-conspiratorial, Beck decides to not just make an album for the kids, he decides to mock them a little by lampooning the music and subjects they're used to. Proof?**** The first single, "Dreams". The song actually features the Millennial Whoop. And those lyrics...so...normal...
As time went on, the songs got more and more overproduced, and less and less substantial. He removed continuity and flow from the album, and came out with ten candy-coated frosting dots that were designed to appeal to the most brainless and least focused demographics: Millennials and the corporations that shill for Millennials.*****

Now, do I actually believe all this? Eh, no. In a nutshell; I think the direction and content of the album as well as the decision to release Colors after Morning Phase was influenced by the fact that the overwhelming response to a skilled artist winning one of the music industry's highest awards****** resulted in the majority of the public asking "who's this guy who is almost 50 and who we've never heard of who just beat Beyonce for the best album released in the entirety of 2014. I don't care if you're a time-travelling space alien like Beck, that's got to get through, and it's got to sting, at least a bit.

I should probably review this thing, huh?

Colors is an album made of and for the zeitgeist. Sadly, while the zeitgeist can be colorful, it can also be hyperactive and vapid. From start to finish, the album is rife with the same overused and mundane concepts and assertions that've plagued the music industry since its inception. "Put it up in the air / if you don't really care", "just wanna stay up all night with you / nothing that I wouldn't rather do", "it's my life, your life / live it once, can't live it twice"*******, "what I need is right in front of me", and so on. Here's the thing though, even if 90% of the lyrics here are just fluff, a lot of the songs are catchy, if not good.
I don't hate this album. I hate...what it is and why it is, the need for it and the music it reflects and mimics. There are good, well-crafted, pop-as-fuck songs here. "Dreams" (the original, not the blander album mix) and "Up All Night" should be on every summer mix tape for at least the next five years, "Dear Life" is solid and would fit nicely on other, better Beck albums, "Square One" and"Wow" are fun (but the latter isn't nearly as weird as seemingly every other review claims it is. There's one "weird" line in it and that accounts for five seconds of a forty five minute album. Fucking get over it and make sure you don't listen to Midnite Vultures or your heads will explode), and "I'm So Free" needs to be on the radio forever.
And hey, if Beck wants to make an album where every song is crafted to be purchased by movie studios or car companies and featured in commercials or trailers or bland CW dramas, who am I to get mad when he does? He's got kids and, apparently, musical genius and Grammy awards don't pay for college. Going from there, as I was listening to Colors for the first time, I could actually see the commercials in which each song would be used and took notes. 

"Colors" - iPhone 8 Color announce or new Canon printer, something where they're trying to sell the idea of "color" as a new invention or product

"Seventh Heaven" -  CW teen drama prom dance song as credits roll; our introverted hero just found out his mother has cancer but she told him to go to the dance anyway and to ask the girl he likes to dance with him and he does and she does - full disclosure - this might be because of the old WB show of the same name, but I've never actually seen an episode so...I don't know.

"I'm So Free" - sugar-free chewing gum commercial, both because the gum is sugar...free and also because chewing gum makes one feel free. Or maybe some smartphone plan that has free long distance.

 "Dear Life" - ABC pilot about a bartender/burgeoning stand up comic, used as the theme or maybe an extended intro. Is the show called "Dear Life"? Patton Oswalt would have been offered and would have turned down this show. But Joel McHale might not have...

"No Distraction" - specifically the bridge and chorus - used in the first act of the inevitable sequel to NERVE, before shit gets dark - driving through a city at night, perhaps with someone yelling out the window about how great the night is going to be

"Dreams" -  is there a sequel to Inside Out? If not, definitely something by Pixar. Probably just in the trailer though.

"Wow" might be the only track too "out there" for typical ad agencies. That's not to say it's not viable, just that I'm not a fucking copywriter. Whatever it gets used for it will have the spec "urban".

"Up All Night" - oh, I don't know...maybe, like, a watch commercial?

"Square One" - in the fourth sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary in a scene where her daughter is having a fun girls' night out but she's in love with one of her girl friends? Was Bridget Jones's baby a chick? Can we rewrite that?

"Fix Me" - "hip", "cool" life insurance ad for 30-somethings. My wife suggested that one and it clicks audibly for me.

I was going to go as far as to record little fake commercials using these tracks in these situations, but that felt shitty. Plus, I'm lazy.

My hope is that Colors will prove to the idiot tastemakers, the vaping and vapid Millennial masses, Twitter********, car company ad execs and to himself that he can be as banal, mundane, and relevant as the rest of what's drifting in the cultural septic tank that is pop music. Then he can get back to being Beck, unfettered, and continue making real music for no one but hiss founky self.
And me.

* Not Gibson's worst movie, but certain scenes reminded me too much of Jacob's Ladder, plus he's still a rapey, anti-Semitic piece of shit and no one seems to remember that anymore.

** In my mind, and with regards to the amount of material they've both got backlogged, I equate Beck to a funkier Richard D. James.

*** I used to be in my twenties, so shush.

**** Or "proof", I suppose.

***** Obviously this doesn't apply to each and every single person born between 1982 and 2004 (or whatever the definition of a "Millennial" is). I know a lot of Millennials and a lot of them they kind of hate the label and fight against it, but for every Millennial I know who is not a piece of shit, I know a dozen who are.

****** Kind of. To some people anyway.

******* aka "YOLO". Ugh.

******** Seriously though, I feel like the marketing budget for this album could offset more than one third world country's debt. But hey, check out that custom Beck hashtag!!!!

End of the Month Music Bitchfest - September 2017

Blogger ate my post. It rolled back five days of on and off writing.
Fuck Blogger.

Here's what you're getting.

Nine Inch Nails
So, you know the score for Ken Burns' Vietnam doc...it's not really great.

Notes/Standouts:

Less Likely
Justified Response - NIN does early 00's Marilyn Manson
Before Dawn - organic evolution - crickets looping cool stuff
A World Away into The Rights Things
Passing the Point - trance inducing
Strangers in Lockstep - sounds like How To Destroy Angels instrumental
Before/After Faith - ha! Bet you thought this was going to be all soft and shit and have a melody! PSYCH!!!
Haunted - Was really hoping for more than just texture on the closer.

Aside from a few moments ("Less Likely", "A World Away", "The Right Things"), a lot of this feels a touch featureless. There's a distinct lack of melody on everything but a few tracks. There's dynamism and levels and everything is beautifully crafted, but it's a beautifully crafted blandness, if that makes sense. "Justified Response", "What Comes Back", "Before And After Faith"...these all sound great, but they're missing something. Maybe Burns and whoever else was in charge thought too much melody would distract from the subject matter or maybe R & R made that choice to get out of the way of said subject matter, either way, yeah.that would distract from subject matter? One could say it's more texture, or one could say R/R need to branch out a bit.

They Might Be Giants
Dial-A-Song 2018 has been announced, but unlike the original DAS in 2015 which featured one new song every week for the whole year, this time around, the Johns are only releasing twenty-six. Ouch. The inherent and unspoken upside to releasing fifty-two tracks is that if three or eight or twenty-three of them suck, there are still twenty-nine fucking songs that don't, not that anything from 2015 sucked. There were a small handful that weren't my cup of tea*, but whatever. Gift horse, mouth, etc. Looking forward to half an avalanche of new They Night be Giants music starting in a few months.


A review of The Meadows
Er. Not really, since I only saw two bands. So, let's say a review of Gorillaz with TV On The Radio as an opener.

This was the second time I've seen TVOTR and, as I felt after seeing them the first time (at the Apollo on their Seeds tour), I wish I knew their lyrics better. My live experiences are marred by more than just people and potential shitty sound; if I don't know the lyric to EVERYTHING being played, I feel like I'm just standing in a crowd of people mumbling. Their set consisted of almost half of Seeds, a fact with which I was completely fine. "Lazerray" and "Happy Idiot" are some of my favorites. "Province" was heartbreakingly beautiful, but the highlight of the evening was right before they launched into "Trouble", when Tunde said someone had told him once that "everything will be okay in the end, and, if things aren't okay, then it's not the end." Now, if I saw this written in some floaty handwriting with a tree at sunset in the background on social media, I might sneer on a good day and sneer and unfollow that person on a bad day. It's one of those brainless, wistful truisms like "today is the first day of the rest of your life", "good things are good" or "well, when it's not raining, it's the time when there's no rain" that plague the internet. But, having this dude, at that point in their highly emotional set and at this point in human history say this before that particular song...I got choked up. And, during the song itself, yeah, I got more than a little weepy.
So.
I guess the point I'm making is: location, location, location.

Moving on.

I'd been a fan of Gorillaz since they first came out (even if I didn't understand exactly what was going on, didn't smoke weed, and hate reggae), and the mythos of the band along with...literally everything else had me fall deep for this weird side project of Damon Albarn's, but I'd never seen them live. To cut right to it, it was a Gorillaz show. For their songs that had music videos, they played those in the background...each one about a second out of sync with the audio, which was very distracting. Aside from that, there were two huge drawbacks, first, the people. I retain that the biggest problem at concerts, the biggest problem with mass transit, the biggest problem with this world as we know it is the people that trundle and slump across its face. Well, I've never flip flopped on that...
The poeple were just...CONSTANTLY MOVING. THIS IS TONIGHT'S HEADLINER! THESE ARE THE ARTISTS YOU CAME TO SEE! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO, HEAD DOWN, EYES SLIDING OVER YOUR PHONES.
You kids...with your Saturday night, post-Gorillaz plans...
Second problem, "Sex Murder Party". Even though, in my original review of Humanz I said that, while I didn't love the album, I understood it was a great album...well...I don't know now. "Sex Murder Party" is a singular song. A singular song that should never be played live. Especially with an added two minute break down, further fucking up the flow of the entire set. It was like placing a black hole in the middle of a wedding reception right between cake and coffee.
However, I got to see Gorillaz live. And, while Albarn and Hewlett have yet to master the human vs animated live balance and I don't know if they ever will and the show desperately needed more Murdoc and Noodle, I saw Gorillaz live. Don't know if I would see them again unless I loved the album they were supporting and they were not headlining a fucking festival, but "El Manana" is still an incredible song.

Marilyn Manson - Heaven Upside Down
Oh man, I am so happy about this album. Review is here.**
For context, here are my reviews of his albums/singles before this.
Born Villain
"Third Day Of A Seven Day Binge"
"Deep Six"
The Pale Emperor

Along with everything else last month, Tori released her newest, Native Invader. I'll be completely honest; this got a bit lost in the shuffle. I have listened to it and there is a lot of artistry here, but nothing grabbed me on my first handful of playthroughs. This doesn't mean something won't, it just means I need more time with it.

But, speaking of talented female artists...call me infatuated. Maybe I am. But, here's the thing, I should be. Everyone should be. Her voice is smoked honey and she's not doing the normal, boring thing all the singers with smoked honey voices are doing with their smoked honey voices. I met her in a star-lit room in Brooklyn. Here's my review of her debut single as Kat Cunning. Skip the review if you must, but listen to the song.

And, finally, still reeling from the shock and confusion of the end of its third season (and, perhaps, its end period?), the two musical accompaniments to Twin Peaks: The Return are out and I reviewed them both. Got a little unhinged with these... Here are my reviews of both the soundtrack and the score. I was thinking about reviewing the album of collected ambient noises and soundscraps that filled in the gaps between the talking, soundtrack, and score, but come on, I don't want to come off as obsessed...

Next month new Beck and new St. Vincent! What have I done to deserve such happy?!?!?! Also, last month, I purchased a little collector's box of all of Ian Dury's albums, Might dig into that when I need a break from reality.
Or maybe Blogger with become sentient, invent time travel and go back to erase Ian Dury from the timeline.
Either way.
Blogger can eat a missive bit-dick.

*...em...bee...gee...sorry.

** Unformatted because the site I occasionally review for is, more often than not, janked like a motherfucker.

A review of Marilyn Manson's "Heaven Upside Down"

From the moment it starts, it's clear that 1996's Antichrist Superstar, the best album Marilyn Manson has ever released, is the template for Heaven Upside Down, and that is always a good idea. This album is evidence that Tyler Bates in Manson's new Trent Reznor. Is he as good as Reznor? Obviously not, but he's the best thing to happen to Manson in over a decade.

The album's opener, "Revelation #12" echoes the thudding, sludgy bass of Antichrist Superstar, the kind of shit Twiggy Ramirez was meant to play. From there, we get something absolutely unique in "Tattooed In Reverse". It's like bluesy-electro-Goth-jock rock. Knowing Manson, this one is for the strippers. It's like something from The Golden Age of Grotesque* slowed down and made massive. The cadence of that opening line..."So fuck your bible and your babble"...that is word play. "WE KNOW WHERE YOU FUCKING LIVE" is another excellent ACS throwback, and his best single in years...fourteen years, to be specific. "We know where you fucking live / we know where you fucking live / we'll burn it down / burn it down / they won't even recognize your corpse". Jesus, no shitty puns there. "SAY10" starts like a horror movie and then becomes the killer, and, while I'll award points for "cocaine and Abel" (because it is so. Fucking. Manson.) I'm taking them away almost immediately for referring to himself as a "legend". You flew too high, Brian. "SAY10" should have been the last track on side A (ABOVE), and the next track, "KILL4ME", should have been left off the album entirely; it's the weakest link here, smacking of Eat Me, Drink Me from its first note: repetitious, plodding, dull. The first in a small handful of missteps.

Side B (BELOW) begins with "Saturnalia", one of the longest tracks Manson has ever created, clocking in at almost eight minutes. I was very excited/anxious for this, as it could have been a toilet fire like "I Want To Kill You Like They Do In The Movies"**, but it kept me engaged the whole time. Between the drums, bass, and Manson's backing croak-als, this is the closest thing to "Bela Lugosi's Dead" he'll ever release, unless he just does a straight-up cover. Manson does love his 80's covers... "Je$u$ Cri$i$"*** has some of that barroom-fist-fight dirt introduced on Pale Emperor and there's something concise about the circular manner of the chorus that appeals to me. I was worried when I first saw the title, but when things kick in about halfway through, all the worries go out the window. They should really play this live. JC might be the perfect amalgamation of Manson's previous album and the direction of his next one...I hope. And, speaking of hope, here's where I started to lose mine. The final three tracks in no way stack up against the majority of the opening seven. Nothing is out and out awful, just a letdown in comparison. I was really looking forward to the title track being as revolutionary and world-ending as that of Antichrist Superstar, but it is not. "Blood Honey" and "Threats of Romance"...just kind of happen.

I like Manson better when he's telling a story and playing a character. I've always seen him as a character and I don't need to hear about how he can't sustain a relationship, it's mundane. I like my Manson screaming and bleeding in front of a burning church, not howling power ballades and asking someone to hold his hand...which he actually does in the title track...like half a dozen times.
"KILL4ME", "Blood Honey", "Heaven Upside Down" , and "Threats of Romance" all feel like remainders from the Pale Emperor sessions and they don't belong here, they distract and get in the way of Manson's re-evolution back to ACS. To be clear, they aren't bad (except for "KILL4ME", that song is bad), just not right for this.
60% of this album is more than solid, more than good, it's great, and, as Manson's music for the past fourteen years has created a sort of grading curve, that translates to a much higher score. Heaven Upside Down is the true successor to Antichrist Superstar. There are traces of Pale Emperor here, but I'm hoping this is the second piece of a new trilogy, the final installment of which will sound wholly like Superstar and signal a return to form for Marilyn Manson as a dark, malevolent force, championing for and bringing about the musical apocalypse.

* Manson's last great album before this one

** A nine minute track from The High End of Low

*** Oy.