Several Species Of Small Furry Thoughts - The comfort of things.

I don’t know about you but I greatly cherish my days off. Not only for the respite from the grind, but also because it allows me prolonged exposure to those things that mean most: my house, pets, and the “things” which identify me. I guess it is because of the tireless media drumbeat of “the death of this that and the other thing” that has made me so aware, but in the last couple of months as I have had time off I have found a new extreme comfort in things. The other day, for instance I listened to the vinyl issue of Wanda Jackson’s fantastic new album while reading the new Ken Kesey biography Acid Christ (autographed copies are available at Tattered Cover) and then moved on to the Neil Young issue of Mojo. Later I watched a Blu-Ray of the very interesting, and somewhat disturbing film adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are. The point isn’t how lucky I am to have all this stuff (which I surely am), but that there is a unique and very human pleasure attached to the items I describe. Not just the content, but the item itself. The holding of a book or magazine, the flipping of a vinyl record to side B and then the endless reexamination of the cover art and liner notes, the smell of my old records which permeates the entire room, mixing with the wonderful odor of old adventures coming from my comic book closet. These are things that are not available with the online experience … and never will be. The warm, olfactory charm of thousands of records physically being in a room with you is a certain magic that may be lost on future generations. How sad. For me these days when I afford myself the luxury of lying on the sofa, blasting music, reading a book - it makes my life worth living in this increasingly upsetting and less beautiful world.

Another CD I have spent some time with lately, has been the deluxe reissue of 13^th Floor Elevators classic album Easter Everywhere the 1967 follow-up to their first classic album, The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13^th Floor Elevators. I have always considered the first album this mercurial band’s best and had not really given Easter Everywhere as much attention. Big mistake! Easter Everywhere is a raw, wild freak-out album that contains some of the most authentic psychedelic music ever made. Easter Everywhere is actually a far more developed album than the first, kicking off with what could be their best song (and one of the best acid revelation lyrics ever) “Slip Inside This House” which over the course of many minutes drags the listener on a moody weird trip informed by chilling vocals, spine-tingling guitar lines and the ever-present sound of the electric jug - the thing that makes 13^th Floor Elevators so distinctive and immediately recognizable apart from their contemporaries. This album really does just drip LSD. Clearly fried themselves, the members of the band shake and quiver through songs, occasionally losing the thread (or the key they are playing in), but never leaving an almost palpable sense of mystery and dread behind. The whole album is fabulous, but the cover of Dylan’s “(It’s All Over Now) Baby Blue” stands as one of the best Bob covers ever. Roky Erickson’s spooky vocals cut right to the core of this existential masterpiece. This is a real 60’s album. The deluxe reissue is a lovely package with a great booklet and two discs that present the album in both mono and stereo and offer up a bonus track. As I let the day-glow weirdness wash over me, I relished in the fondling of, and reading the booklet. There are rare photos in the package and I stare at them until my eyes grow blurry. I put the package down, but keep my hand on it, feeling the smooth surface.

- Paul

What Are You Listening to Lately (Part 13)?

Kayne West – 808s and Heartbreak
This album just gets more and more interesting for me. It's spare and minimal, yes, but it's got hook value - West's too pop-savvy to not have it - and for as little as it's got going on audibly (though more than the title lets on), it's proven to be quite durable, not wearing thin even with just voice and 808 on many tracks. I'm not a big fan of "RoboCop," lyrics are just too silly, but he's basically opening up as much as he can while staying within a pop format. Crafting songs of love and heartbreak is a pop given, there's no reason he shouldn't be doing it too; and there's no reason someone as talented as he is shouldn't do it well, which he does. It's such a break from his norm - though there's nothing in the electro-heavy sound he hadn't tried before - that it's causing some waves. In short, it's an experiment - an experiment within pop form, which doesn't permit you to go too far after all - and only time will tell if it will be considered a grand flop or a new direction, a brave experiment. It's personal, it's catchy, and whether it proves to be a detour or not I like the tunes, the words, and the experiment enough that I expect to dig it for a while.

Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru
Let's forget that word "psychedelic" shall we? Too much baggage associated with it, and most people's interpretations of the word are very personal. I mean, if you want a parallel to this music, this is more Nuggets or 13th Floor Elevators - styled garage band stuff, not heavily processed, acid-drenched shit like Parable of Arable Land or Electric Ladyland. It's raw, rocking, influenced by the "now" (meaning of course "then") sound that breathed life into a million bands about the world, each working their regional variation on the music that was in the air. So from '68 to '78, these Peruvian bands made songs for dancing, devoid of the intellectual or class-conscious aims (or pretensions) of, say, the San Francisco scene or the Brazilian Tropicalistas - closer in spirit to Malaysian Yeh-Yeh or, well, the we-just-wanna-have-some-fun Nuggets stuff. Songs don't catch as well as the best of Nuggets though - partly a function of my mono-lingual limits, partly a function of so many of them taking off from roughly the same rhythmic base and building a Latin dance tune flavored with rock and roll on top of that. I do enjoy listening to this and periodically sounds do jump out - a curious Moog moment, a nice Farfisa riff, a vocal flourish - that make me take a momentary notice, but it all ultimately fades back into the flow. Any tune here would liven up your party, your mixtape, your playlist, but taken 17 in a row for an hour and change, it gets tough to distinguish one from the next, even if you can live in the moment and dig them there. Oh yeah, except for the time when one of the groups adapts "Fur Elise" to Chicha form. Maybe not the best song here, but it sure does stick out.

Kimya Dawson – I’m Sorry that Sometimes I’m Mean
It kind of bums me out that Kimya's music being all over Juno is going to encourage those cynics who don't like the film to create a backlash against her when they really don't even understand what the fuck she does, tying in Kimya with some kind of saccharin-sickly-sweet bit of cutesy-pie idea that's not really her metier. I know it's happening because I've heard it here at the record store and it fucking sucks, because to me she's a totally uncompromised musician, making things her way and making her own slow and steady advances. What the haters key in on - and I'll admit here that I'm cynical enough myself to not even have the remotest interest in seeing Juno - is the sense of whimsy, something that's all over this album. Talking Ernest and Talking Pee-Wee dolls, cartoons and cereal - the subject matter is enough to make you think she needs to grow up already. But what she's doing is brilliant - childlike, not childish, and if you don't get the difference, it's something you ought to think about. Childlike to me means approaching a subject with the openness of a child, experiencing things with some kind of wonder and not the sort of jaded hipster-dom that indie music is so rife with. Childish, on the other hand, is regressive, infantile, taking your ball and going home, crying over spilt milk, always raging at a world that might hurt you and not trusting anybody. She's always the former, never the latter. She sees bad shit that goes on but doesn't let it kill her spirit. She sings about it instead. She reaches out to other people who might feel the same. And when she's using Talking Ernest or cartoon references, it's nothing so heady as a metaphor, it's just a way of talking about adult subjects with language kids will understand, or on the flip side, talking to other adults while keying in on touchstones of a youthful idealism that she hasn't lost contact with. If I don't love every song the way I do on other recordings of hers, I love enough of them, and I love the ideas and ideals behind all of them. I hope her success via Juno doesn't spoil her. It would be a tragedy. Based on what I know of her from a couple conversations and from her music, I can't imagine it happening. And if she emerges bigger and stronger (and hopefully wealthier too), it's gonna be the best sign I've seen in the music industry in more than a decade.