/mu/:
4chan's best kept secret
Described by Urban Dictionary as “a place of sheer genius and utter stupidity,” 4chan — the birthplace of memes — is known mostly to the few who already prowl and post anonymously on the site’s various imageboards.
4chan is home to nearly 70 boards devoted to topics ranging from manga and Pokémon to political discussion and pornography and welcomes 18 million monthly users, according to founder Christopher Poole back in 2011. But the site’s most worthwhile subsection is /mu/, the board devoted to all things music related — a thriving, living piece of entertaining and provocative internet counterculture.
/mu/’s page consists of roughly 150 threads at a time, where any person connected to the internet can start a new one. The first one is a fixed greeting picturing a cartoon man with a shotgun, modified with a shirt of the optical illusion on the cover of Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion and the drumhead from Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
These two albums — along with My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King and Madvillain’s Madvillainy, among others — are considered /mu/core, though it is often debated. This means the community frequently discusses these albums, largely due to their widespread approval by users. The latter examples, for instance, are on the whole seen as the pinnacles of their respective genres — shoegaze, progressive rock and hip-hop.
Discussion ranges from K-pop to metal to classical, and finding niche genres and fan bases is one of the keener pleasures of visiting /mu/.
The overall attitude of the average user, given the loose posting rules and anonymity, is occasionally riddled with irony, sarcasm, condescension and general political incorrectness. The board’s creative insults and invented internet vernacular practically deserve their own article. But once you are able to separate the “bait,” or purposefully outlandish statements, from useful and often brutally honest exchanges between persnickety strangers, /mu/ becomes an endlessly engaging format for a dialogue about music.
Between the complicated, meme-fueled jests and users calling each other out on disagreeable opinions — whether they’re genuine or not — the Wild West of the web is reliably amusing. Meanwhile, the many moments of insightful candor can affirm or challenge your own musical tastes. Though the appeal of /mu/ to the fun-seeking internet user is in the insults and jokes, a vast majority of users are there to share their interests with similar minds. Because the average user is a self-declared music aficionado, this leads to the discovery of great music you would never have found otherwise.
Bizarre subgenres like witch house and vaporwave contain their own newly established traditions and notable albums, despite having only been around for a few years. There are threads for more general genres, but even the ones with small Wikipedia pages get their time in the sun on /mu/. Users can also recommend albums and receive recommendations in return in related threads — usually these involve charts that outline a person’s favorite albums.
Unlike Reddit — a site that, like Pitchfork, is often at the butt of jokes — in which users can upvote or downvote posts, threads exist chronologically and only for seven days in the archive. Most threads, even the popular ones, only exist on the main catalog for 24 hours — once a thread ceases to have replies, it is closed and slowly moves down the catalogue until it is finally archived.
As the truly committed users are stuck up on their high horse, each anonymous voice declares itself to be true and each person can call out other users by tagging posts in their own. With no way to bury the unpopular thoughts or propagate any one view, the cumulative opinions on /mu/ are very much democratic. The most “right” opinion is usually the one most agreed upon.
Sure, users can be antagonistic toward one another in disagreement, but usually the users getting flack for their comments are the ones who, according to internet decorum, deserve it. They are the outright contrarians, clueless proletarians and the hyper-pretentious.
The stream of content weaving from jests to discernments end up being the funniest and most informative threads — when one has reached upward of 150 replies, you’re almost certainly in for something good.
A thread in which two sides of a topic are debated is something like living art. But as an observer, finding the few declarations that echo your own thoughts can be as emotionally fulfilling as it is aggravating when a favorite of yours has been dragged through the dirt.
Save for perhaps Loveless and In the Court of the Crimson King, the most universally praised albums are often subject to the most debate. The biggest paradox of /mu/ is that no artist or album can be celebrated without backlash, and likewise no music can be perpetually hated without a few defenders.
Take Tame Impala’s Lonerism, Kevin Parker’s sophomore psychedelic rock revival record, released in 2012 to universal acclaim and hailed by critics as one of the best albums of the decade so far. Following last year’s Currents, a more pop-driven breakup record that earned Parker further mainstream appeal, debate over the previous LP has become heated to the point that threads about the album appear daily. Many call Lonerism a modern classic. Others claim its aim towards drug-induced listening and homage to a bygone era of comfortable, Beatles-esque music make the album conceptually derivative.
Whereas music review sites like Pitchfork deliver open and shut cases by letting reviewers stamp their reviews with a definitive score out of 10, /mu/, for all of its shouting, is far more open-minded. Free from catering to any sort of hipster crowd or independent music scene — like Youtube music reviewer Anthony Fantano and critic Piero Scaruffi, both of whom are discussed regularly — the ideology of /mu/ is constantly morphing and nothing is beyond the realm of discussion.
The formats for user interaction are plentiful and creative. For instance, some threads are for arranging pictures into three boxes, the first showing the album listened to, followed by visuals on what the listener expected and ultimately what they got. These are funny for illuminating the way album art can influence what we expect from albums.
Though the population may have too much favor for idiosyncratic acts like Grimes and Death Grips, /mu/, in terms of authentic, enthusiastic cultural conversation, is a valuable alternative to the more self-important posturing of typical music criticism.
*Published in The Pitt News / August 19th, 2016
4chan is home to nearly 70 boards devoted to topics ranging from manga and Pokémon to political discussion and pornography and welcomes 18 million monthly users, according to founder Christopher Poole back in 2011. But the site’s most worthwhile subsection is /mu/, the board devoted to all things music related — a thriving, living piece of entertaining and provocative internet counterculture.
/mu/’s page consists of roughly 150 threads at a time, where any person connected to the internet can start a new one. The first one is a fixed greeting picturing a cartoon man with a shotgun, modified with a shirt of the optical illusion on the cover of Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion and the drumhead from Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
These two albums — along with My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King and Madvillain’s Madvillainy, among others — are considered /mu/core, though it is often debated. This means the community frequently discusses these albums, largely due to their widespread approval by users. The latter examples, for instance, are on the whole seen as the pinnacles of their respective genres — shoegaze, progressive rock and hip-hop.
Discussion ranges from K-pop to metal to classical, and finding niche genres and fan bases is one of the keener pleasures of visiting /mu/.
The overall attitude of the average user, given the loose posting rules and anonymity, is occasionally riddled with irony, sarcasm, condescension and general political incorrectness. The board’s creative insults and invented internet vernacular practically deserve their own article. But once you are able to separate the “bait,” or purposefully outlandish statements, from useful and often brutally honest exchanges between persnickety strangers, /mu/ becomes an endlessly engaging format for a dialogue about music.
Between the complicated, meme-fueled jests and users calling each other out on disagreeable opinions — whether they’re genuine or not — the Wild West of the web is reliably amusing. Meanwhile, the many moments of insightful candor can affirm or challenge your own musical tastes. Though the appeal of /mu/ to the fun-seeking internet user is in the insults and jokes, a vast majority of users are there to share their interests with similar minds. Because the average user is a self-declared music aficionado, this leads to the discovery of great music you would never have found otherwise.
Bizarre subgenres like witch house and vaporwave contain their own newly established traditions and notable albums, despite having only been around for a few years. There are threads for more general genres, but even the ones with small Wikipedia pages get their time in the sun on /mu/. Users can also recommend albums and receive recommendations in return in related threads — usually these involve charts that outline a person’s favorite albums.
Unlike Reddit — a site that, like Pitchfork, is often at the butt of jokes — in which users can upvote or downvote posts, threads exist chronologically and only for seven days in the archive. Most threads, even the popular ones, only exist on the main catalog for 24 hours — once a thread ceases to have replies, it is closed and slowly moves down the catalogue until it is finally archived.
As the truly committed users are stuck up on their high horse, each anonymous voice declares itself to be true and each person can call out other users by tagging posts in their own. With no way to bury the unpopular thoughts or propagate any one view, the cumulative opinions on /mu/ are very much democratic. The most “right” opinion is usually the one most agreed upon.
Sure, users can be antagonistic toward one another in disagreement, but usually the users getting flack for their comments are the ones who, according to internet decorum, deserve it. They are the outright contrarians, clueless proletarians and the hyper-pretentious.
The stream of content weaving from jests to discernments end up being the funniest and most informative threads — when one has reached upward of 150 replies, you’re almost certainly in for something good.
A thread in which two sides of a topic are debated is something like living art. But as an observer, finding the few declarations that echo your own thoughts can be as emotionally fulfilling as it is aggravating when a favorite of yours has been dragged through the dirt.
Save for perhaps Loveless and In the Court of the Crimson King, the most universally praised albums are often subject to the most debate. The biggest paradox of /mu/ is that no artist or album can be celebrated without backlash, and likewise no music can be perpetually hated without a few defenders.
Take Tame Impala’s Lonerism, Kevin Parker’s sophomore psychedelic rock revival record, released in 2012 to universal acclaim and hailed by critics as one of the best albums of the decade so far. Following last year’s Currents, a more pop-driven breakup record that earned Parker further mainstream appeal, debate over the previous LP has become heated to the point that threads about the album appear daily. Many call Lonerism a modern classic. Others claim its aim towards drug-induced listening and homage to a bygone era of comfortable, Beatles-esque music make the album conceptually derivative.
Whereas music review sites like Pitchfork deliver open and shut cases by letting reviewers stamp their reviews with a definitive score out of 10, /mu/, for all of its shouting, is far more open-minded. Free from catering to any sort of hipster crowd or independent music scene — like Youtube music reviewer Anthony Fantano and critic Piero Scaruffi, both of whom are discussed regularly — the ideology of /mu/ is constantly morphing and nothing is beyond the realm of discussion.
The formats for user interaction are plentiful and creative. For instance, some threads are for arranging pictures into three boxes, the first showing the album listened to, followed by visuals on what the listener expected and ultimately what they got. These are funny for illuminating the way album art can influence what we expect from albums.
Though the population may have too much favor for idiosyncratic acts like Grimes and Death Grips, /mu/, in terms of authentic, enthusiastic cultural conversation, is a valuable alternative to the more self-important posturing of typical music criticism.
*Published in The Pitt News / August 19th, 2016
Still where it's at:
Beck's Odelay turns 20
The jigsaw jazz and get-fresh flow of Odelay has only improved with age.
Two decades hasn’t been enough time for many people to fully make sense of Beck’s alphabet soup raps or absorb all the details of the Dust Brothers’ stellar production, which just gets fresher with each listen. The chameleon-like singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s second studio album celebrates its 20th anniversary this Saturday, and its vigor hasn’t waned one bit.
Recent singles like “Dreams” and “Wow” reek of the 45-year-old’s desperate attempt to feed mainstream appetites following the renewed limelight generated by last year’s unexpected Album of the Year Grammy win for Morning Phase, his most listless and uninspired album to date.
Twelve albums deep, Beck is certainly beyond his prime — radically shifting his sound for each LP has turned into retreads as of late. Guero and The Information, both released in the mid-2000’s, live in Beck’s past while feeling calculated rather than animated, and Morning Phase companions his other classic Sea Change, just with no emotional measure. But in his youth, Beck conjured some peculiarly pleasing records fueled by berserk enthusiasm, and Odelay is his grotesque masterpiece.
On Odelay, — a play on the Mexican slang “órale” or “what’s up?” — the Dust Brothers built upon the zany, ironic jest of Beck’s thematic content and advanced it further. They were able to make dazzling compositions from the lines of Beck’s insane raps and cryptic, catchy hooks — not unlike the formula for his unexpected breakthrough hit “Loser” just two years before — and weave them into a rich puzzle of gut-busting rock-outs, soulful beats and ear-melting noise bits.
In an attempt to extinguish the “one-hit wonder” cries that followed “Loser” and to take full advantage of the creative freedom allowed by DGC Records who signed him initially, Beck decided to collaborate with the Dust Brothers, consisting of producers E.Z. Mike and King Gizmo.
Despite forming as early as 1985, the Dust Brothers have been fairly selective in their work, releasing only two works in the ’80s, including the innovative, sample-based sound behind the Beastie Boys’ rhymes on their finest record Paul’s Boutique. Odelay is their only full album of production from the ’90s, aside from the score of David Fincher’s Fight Club.
Recorded in a tiny room in the Brothers’ house in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, the sound of Odelay reflects the lo-fi environment of its conception, incorporating abrupt changes and collage-like composition. Despite generating two charting singles and peaking at 16 on the Billboard 100, the album’s sound — only made accessible at all by the Brothers’ buoyant touch — is bracing, novel and often bewildering.
Take “Hotwax,” the album’s second track, which has a Spanish chorus translating to “I am a broken record / I have bubblegum in my brain.” Less than four minutes contains eight diverse samples, Beck’s looped slide guitar, some electric riffs and a few dank verses, ending with “All my days I got the grizzly words / Hijack flavors that I’m flipping like birds.” The song is his boldest fusion of hip-hop and folk, unfolding into new waters every 20 seconds thanks to the Brothers’ arsenal of wild drums and noise breakdowns.
Though “Where It’s At” is perhaps Beck’s coolest song — I could listen to its final 90-second jam out all day, and the main riff is severely funky — “Hotwax” is easily the most exemplary track on Odelay. It captures the way Beck’s redneck wordplay and the Brothers’ sleek, screwy production complement and elevate each of their sounds into something confident and undeniable yet completely bonkers.
In “The New Pollution,” Beck gets his heart broken by a woman “riding low on the drunken rivers.” Describing a girl who has “a cigarette on each arm” and “a paradise camouflage,” the spirited and original portrait of a femme fatale was about as romantic as he ever got on the album. As the lightest and most radio-friendly piece of the whole, it works as a slightly twisted yet comfortably grooving pop song.
The wilder side of Beck shows much more though, as he raps fiercely — “blowing static on a paranoid shortwave” — through the insanity of “Novacane,” screams about frogs at the end of “Minus” and becomes a morose snake-charmer on the Middle-Eastern-esque “Derelict.”
The easiest criticism of the eclectic performer’s work is that Beck has little meaning behind his words — but through the nonsense, Beck is communicating to listeners that life is absurd, and a line like “Let your bottom dollars fall / throwing your two bit cares down the drain” somehow makes the chaos a little clearer.
He takes a breather at the end of each half of the album. Beck slowly ventures through pseudo-profundity on “Ramshackle,” the perfectly solemn closer, which was recorded along with a few similarly melancholy B-side tracks prior to the Brothers’ involvement. “Cause there’s no kind of wealth / your suiting yourself / You leave yourself behind” he explains on the final verse of the album. And on “Jack-Ass,” Beck gets real — this time with more danceability, singing “Loose ends tying a noose in the back of my mind.”
In 2008, Odelay received a reissue with a wealth of bonus tracks and B-sides, revealing the depths of inspiration in those long bedroom sessions. On the quirky record, just as the Brothers’ oozing beats, electronics and vibrant samples matched the nihilism of Fight Club a few years later, their style aligned seamlessly with Beck’s absurdist imagery and playfully tongue-in-cheek, anti-folk hip-hop rock star persona.
Beck would go on to work with producers like Nigel Godrich and Danger Mouse, even reteaming with the Dust Brothers a decade later on Guero, but the magic never matched Odelay, proving the record truly earns the “lightning in a bottle” clichée
While his mid-’90s counterparts were busy taking rock music into grunge and similarly dreary places, Beck put the fun and the freedom back into the idea of a man jamming on a guitar by adding two turntables and a microphone.
*Published in The Pitt News / June 14th, 2016
Two decades hasn’t been enough time for many people to fully make sense of Beck’s alphabet soup raps or absorb all the details of the Dust Brothers’ stellar production, which just gets fresher with each listen. The chameleon-like singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s second studio album celebrates its 20th anniversary this Saturday, and its vigor hasn’t waned one bit.
Recent singles like “Dreams” and “Wow” reek of the 45-year-old’s desperate attempt to feed mainstream appetites following the renewed limelight generated by last year’s unexpected Album of the Year Grammy win for Morning Phase, his most listless and uninspired album to date.
Twelve albums deep, Beck is certainly beyond his prime — radically shifting his sound for each LP has turned into retreads as of late. Guero and The Information, both released in the mid-2000’s, live in Beck’s past while feeling calculated rather than animated, and Morning Phase companions his other classic Sea Change, just with no emotional measure. But in his youth, Beck conjured some peculiarly pleasing records fueled by berserk enthusiasm, and Odelay is his grotesque masterpiece.
On Odelay, — a play on the Mexican slang “órale” or “what’s up?” — the Dust Brothers built upon the zany, ironic jest of Beck’s thematic content and advanced it further. They were able to make dazzling compositions from the lines of Beck’s insane raps and cryptic, catchy hooks — not unlike the formula for his unexpected breakthrough hit “Loser” just two years before — and weave them into a rich puzzle of gut-busting rock-outs, soulful beats and ear-melting noise bits.
In an attempt to extinguish the “one-hit wonder” cries that followed “Loser” and to take full advantage of the creative freedom allowed by DGC Records who signed him initially, Beck decided to collaborate with the Dust Brothers, consisting of producers E.Z. Mike and King Gizmo.
Despite forming as early as 1985, the Dust Brothers have been fairly selective in their work, releasing only two works in the ’80s, including the innovative, sample-based sound behind the Beastie Boys’ rhymes on their finest record Paul’s Boutique. Odelay is their only full album of production from the ’90s, aside from the score of David Fincher’s Fight Club.
Recorded in a tiny room in the Brothers’ house in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, the sound of Odelay reflects the lo-fi environment of its conception, incorporating abrupt changes and collage-like composition. Despite generating two charting singles and peaking at 16 on the Billboard 100, the album’s sound — only made accessible at all by the Brothers’ buoyant touch — is bracing, novel and often bewildering.
Take “Hotwax,” the album’s second track, which has a Spanish chorus translating to “I am a broken record / I have bubblegum in my brain.” Less than four minutes contains eight diverse samples, Beck’s looped slide guitar, some electric riffs and a few dank verses, ending with “All my days I got the grizzly words / Hijack flavors that I’m flipping like birds.” The song is his boldest fusion of hip-hop and folk, unfolding into new waters every 20 seconds thanks to the Brothers’ arsenal of wild drums and noise breakdowns.
Though “Where It’s At” is perhaps Beck’s coolest song — I could listen to its final 90-second jam out all day, and the main riff is severely funky — “Hotwax” is easily the most exemplary track on Odelay. It captures the way Beck’s redneck wordplay and the Brothers’ sleek, screwy production complement and elevate each of their sounds into something confident and undeniable yet completely bonkers.
In “The New Pollution,” Beck gets his heart broken by a woman “riding low on the drunken rivers.” Describing a girl who has “a cigarette on each arm” and “a paradise camouflage,” the spirited and original portrait of a femme fatale was about as romantic as he ever got on the album. As the lightest and most radio-friendly piece of the whole, it works as a slightly twisted yet comfortably grooving pop song.
The wilder side of Beck shows much more though, as he raps fiercely — “blowing static on a paranoid shortwave” — through the insanity of “Novacane,” screams about frogs at the end of “Minus” and becomes a morose snake-charmer on the Middle-Eastern-esque “Derelict.”
The easiest criticism of the eclectic performer’s work is that Beck has little meaning behind his words — but through the nonsense, Beck is communicating to listeners that life is absurd, and a line like “Let your bottom dollars fall / throwing your two bit cares down the drain” somehow makes the chaos a little clearer.
He takes a breather at the end of each half of the album. Beck slowly ventures through pseudo-profundity on “Ramshackle,” the perfectly solemn closer, which was recorded along with a few similarly melancholy B-side tracks prior to the Brothers’ involvement. “Cause there’s no kind of wealth / your suiting yourself / You leave yourself behind” he explains on the final verse of the album. And on “Jack-Ass,” Beck gets real — this time with more danceability, singing “Loose ends tying a noose in the back of my mind.”
In 2008, Odelay received a reissue with a wealth of bonus tracks and B-sides, revealing the depths of inspiration in those long bedroom sessions. On the quirky record, just as the Brothers’ oozing beats, electronics and vibrant samples matched the nihilism of Fight Club a few years later, their style aligned seamlessly with Beck’s absurdist imagery and playfully tongue-in-cheek, anti-folk hip-hop rock star persona.
Beck would go on to work with producers like Nigel Godrich and Danger Mouse, even reteaming with the Dust Brothers a decade later on Guero, but the magic never matched Odelay, proving the record truly earns the “lightning in a bottle” clichée
While his mid-’90s counterparts were busy taking rock music into grunge and similarly dreary places, Beck put the fun and the freedom back into the idea of a man jamming on a guitar by adding two turntables and a microphone.
*Published in The Pitt News / June 14th, 2016
Defining the college experience
in three albums
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Whether it’s introspective headphone listening in a dark dorm room, or being knocked out by subwoofers at a loud party, music permeates college life.
Though it frequently surrounds us, music is only truly rewarding when it validates our emotions and shortens the bridge of empathy between friends and strangers. What follows aren’t “college albums” per se, but they have been have been essential to my growth as a person and a listener.
These are the albums that have made Pitt and Pittsburgh feel a little more real and little more like home. And perhaps they can do the same for new students trying to shape the sounds of their lives in a new place.
Is This It by The Strokes
I grew up with a love for The Strokes, but following a high school obsession, college has minted the band’s debut album as a personal favorite.
The Strokes’ early work was arguably the greatest influence on post-2000’s rock, reinventing garage rock and setting a new standard for what cool sounds like.
By running his vocals through a guitar amp, songwriter and vocalist Julian Casablancas put a contemporary spin on the simple rock band outfit. And with remarkably tight craft and effortlessly catchy melodies, the frontman managed to create a modern classic that would be a creative peak.
With lyrics that sound like fragments of trivial conversation — “I can’t think cause I’m just way too tired” — and Casablanca’s convincing Lou Reed impression, the attitude of “Is This It” at times radiates disenchantment, apathy and sexual frustration.
But each meticulously composed, instrumentally lean song provided the punchy bewilderment to sell new-age cynicism. In his words, the then-22-year-old provided some sage, albeit cocky, quips about 21st century zeitgeist — “I should have worked much harder / I should have just not bothered” still stands out.
There’s also plenty of nostalgia. “Someday,” their best song and one of their most popular singles, shimmers with sly pop mastery and longing lines like, “When we was young, oh man did we have fun / Always, always.”
And doesn’t, “I’m working so I don’t have to try so hard,” perfectly describes the ironies of college and new adult life?
Wistful, blissful and effortless, Is This It doesn’t age, and its timelessness resonates with a college-aged kid in a big city. Its calculated aggression and youthful swagger make it essential and comforting listening to the potentially disoriented, anxious first-year.
Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City by Kendrick Lamar
No doubt you will hear at least one track from this recent masterpiece bouncing off the walls at any given house party during the semester.
Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City was one of my first great submersions into the art of hip-hop, hooking me to a further obsession with the brief history of music’s currently most popular and controversial genre.
Lamar’s brilliant quasi-biographical LP is introspective and a real banger, often at the same time. Granted, a dubious number of frat bros are too caught up drinking to the beat of "Swimming Pools (Drank)" to notice its blatant and ironic stance against alcohol indulgence.
Album highlight “Backseat Freestyle” features some career-best verses by the West Coast rapper. The song doubles both as a raw, hard-hitting single, and, in the album’s context, a semi-satirical adherence to typical rap staples of guns and misogyny.
The tact and painstaking structure of its concept makes Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City worth revisiting often. Lamar proved his mainstay in the hip-hop community with last year’s widely acclaimed To Pimp a Butterfly, so overplayed tracks like “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” and “Money Trees” are likely to be queued and blasted over bass-heavy speakers on the weekends for years to come.
But they’ve held up so far, so no one will mind.
Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective
This is based on personal experience, but Merriweather Post Pavilion has been a seminal album for my college years and music palette in general.
The most accessible of their discography at the time of its release, the album was still startling to me in my first year at Pitt, as I was bred on relatively safe indie rock in my high school days. The dense, alien-pop of the eighth album by hipster-cred band Animal Collective is intricately produced and — at least to virgin ears — wildly experimental.
This album helped me embrace the challenging side of music, and ultimately convinced me to try and resonate with sounds and situations that may put me off at first or make me feel uncomfortable.
Of course, if you want to stay cool around AnCo fans, you’re better off saying Feels or Here Comes the Indian is your favorite record, even though Merriweather Post Pavilion is objectively one of their best.
Experimentation is a given of the college lifestyle, but you have to actively find the pleasure in weirdness and testing the limits of your taste in order to get the most out of music and college.
*Published in The Pitt News / May 31st, 2016
Though it frequently surrounds us, music is only truly rewarding when it validates our emotions and shortens the bridge of empathy between friends and strangers. What follows aren’t “college albums” per se, but they have been have been essential to my growth as a person and a listener.
These are the albums that have made Pitt and Pittsburgh feel a little more real and little more like home. And perhaps they can do the same for new students trying to shape the sounds of their lives in a new place.
Is This It by The Strokes
I grew up with a love for The Strokes, but following a high school obsession, college has minted the band’s debut album as a personal favorite.
The Strokes’ early work was arguably the greatest influence on post-2000’s rock, reinventing garage rock and setting a new standard for what cool sounds like.
By running his vocals through a guitar amp, songwriter and vocalist Julian Casablancas put a contemporary spin on the simple rock band outfit. And with remarkably tight craft and effortlessly catchy melodies, the frontman managed to create a modern classic that would be a creative peak.
With lyrics that sound like fragments of trivial conversation — “I can’t think cause I’m just way too tired” — and Casablanca’s convincing Lou Reed impression, the attitude of “Is This It” at times radiates disenchantment, apathy and sexual frustration.
But each meticulously composed, instrumentally lean song provided the punchy bewilderment to sell new-age cynicism. In his words, the then-22-year-old provided some sage, albeit cocky, quips about 21st century zeitgeist — “I should have worked much harder / I should have just not bothered” still stands out.
There’s also plenty of nostalgia. “Someday,” their best song and one of their most popular singles, shimmers with sly pop mastery and longing lines like, “When we was young, oh man did we have fun / Always, always.”
And doesn’t, “I’m working so I don’t have to try so hard,” perfectly describes the ironies of college and new adult life?
Wistful, blissful and effortless, Is This It doesn’t age, and its timelessness resonates with a college-aged kid in a big city. Its calculated aggression and youthful swagger make it essential and comforting listening to the potentially disoriented, anxious first-year.
Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City by Kendrick Lamar
No doubt you will hear at least one track from this recent masterpiece bouncing off the walls at any given house party during the semester.
Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City was one of my first great submersions into the art of hip-hop, hooking me to a further obsession with the brief history of music’s currently most popular and controversial genre.
Lamar’s brilliant quasi-biographical LP is introspective and a real banger, often at the same time. Granted, a dubious number of frat bros are too caught up drinking to the beat of "Swimming Pools (Drank)" to notice its blatant and ironic stance against alcohol indulgence.
Album highlight “Backseat Freestyle” features some career-best verses by the West Coast rapper. The song doubles both as a raw, hard-hitting single, and, in the album’s context, a semi-satirical adherence to typical rap staples of guns and misogyny.
The tact and painstaking structure of its concept makes Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City worth revisiting often. Lamar proved his mainstay in the hip-hop community with last year’s widely acclaimed To Pimp a Butterfly, so overplayed tracks like “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” and “Money Trees” are likely to be queued and blasted over bass-heavy speakers on the weekends for years to come.
But they’ve held up so far, so no one will mind.
Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective
This is based on personal experience, but Merriweather Post Pavilion has been a seminal album for my college years and music palette in general.
The most accessible of their discography at the time of its release, the album was still startling to me in my first year at Pitt, as I was bred on relatively safe indie rock in my high school days. The dense, alien-pop of the eighth album by hipster-cred band Animal Collective is intricately produced and — at least to virgin ears — wildly experimental.
This album helped me embrace the challenging side of music, and ultimately convinced me to try and resonate with sounds and situations that may put me off at first or make me feel uncomfortable.
Of course, if you want to stay cool around AnCo fans, you’re better off saying Feels or Here Comes the Indian is your favorite record, even though Merriweather Post Pavilion is objectively one of their best.
Experimentation is a given of the college lifestyle, but you have to actively find the pleasure in weirdness and testing the limits of your taste in order to get the most out of music and college.
*Published in The Pitt News / May 31st, 2016
An ode to Pet Sounds:
the enduring genius of Brian Williams
Before The Beatles truly blossomed, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds represented one of the most seismic shifts in the rapidly evolving landscape of popular music during the latter half of the ’60s.
Brian Wilson’s magnum opus turned 50 years old May 16, and the record remains a remarkable listening experience even half a century out. Though The Beach Boys’ name is attached, Wilson was the predominant creative force behind the conception of the album.
Released to underwhelming critical and commercial reactions, Pet Sounds has grown on people in the past 50 years. The album was key to the development of psychedelic and progressive rock and is considered by many to be one of the greatest albums in the history of popular music. The album’s legacy and influence, as well as its obsession with love, heartbreak and the complexity of human emotion, has extended well into the 21st century.
Last year, a biopic on Wilson entitled Love and Mercy, starring Paul Dano and John Cusack, received considerable critical praise. In addition, Wilson, now 73, began his “Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary World Tour” last month, which marks the final performances of the album’s music.
A striking alteration on the band’s more radio-friendly sound, the album’s conception began in 1964, when Wilson suffered a severe panic attack on a flight following a television performance. Wilson’s damaged psyche was his excuse to forgo touring with his band mates and instead focus more intently on songwriting and recording.
In 1965, Wilson formed a collaboration with Tony Asher, who ultimately became the self-described “interpreter” of Wilson’s thematic direction for Pet Sounds. Asher put into words the sentiments Wilson wanted to convey with each song. Following Wilson’s satisfaction with “You Still Believe in Me,” the album’s second track, he decided Asher was the right fit.
Asher also showed Wilson Rubber Soul, an album by The Beatles, which became a major inspiration for the album due to its absence of filler tracks. In turn, the Fab Four would echo the influence of Pet Sounds two albums later with the avant-garde pop touchstone Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Wilson hired The Wrecking Crew, a group of session musicians famous for their work with producer Phil Spector, to record the album’s instrumentation. Backed with ravishing orchestral arrangements, Pet Sounds possesses a childlike, carnival-esque tone. The experimental instruments — from bicycle bells and dog barks to harpsichords and French horns — relay subtle psychedelic qualities, as Wilson dabbled in mind-altering substances at the time.
Considered one of the first true examples of a concept album, the ambitious revision of pop music standards in Pet Sounds is strung together by introspection and disillusioned musings on love and dejection. Wilson bears his soul in both confession and vocal performance.
Juxtaposing loneliness with dissections of romance enhances the sensation behind his ideas through contrast. The clear-eyed, unabashed honesty behind the words of Pet Sounds — especially on the subject of despondence — is met with vibrant symphonic marvels from Wilson’s arrangements and sweet melodies.
Many of the songs form meaning by discussing the foibles of romance. Though a frequent topic of pop music, Wilson manages to find fresh perspectives. In “That’s Not Me,” which analyzes the price of independence, Wilson candidly admits, “I could try to be big in the eyes of the world/What matters to me is what I could be to just one girl.” But the mawkishness that can seem overwhelming is always offset by the maturity supporting each observation.
Paul McCartney’s favorite song and masterful side-two opener “God Only Knows” takes a hopeful stance in the face of romance’s inevitable end. “Here Today” flips the point of view and is directed towards a naïve man in the midst of newfound love, “Right now you think that she’s perfection/This time is really an exception,” Mike Love sings. He was the band member least receptive to Wilson’s direction in sound.
Featuring some of the most resplendent harmonizations on Pet Sounds, the opener, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” neatly captures the innocence at the heart of Wilson’s creative voice. “I wish that every kiss was never-ending,” Wilson divulges as a young lover yearning for the freedom of adult life.
Regardless of the legacies behind masterpieces like “God Only Knows” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” the album’s most underrated offering is “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder).”
The song’s chord progressions suggest a mood both surreal and gentle, and the lyrics touch on a beauty that cannot be described in words: “I can hear so much in your sighs/And I can see so much in your eyes,” Wilson begins. The track depicts a lovely silence between romantic companions and the fruitlessness of speaking during tender moments.
“Listen, listen, listen,” Wilson implores as the bridge’s swelling strings lean back into refrain once again. Using inverted chords and challenging progressions, the peaceful churn of “Don’t Talk” is a microcosm of “Pet Sounds’” complexities.
But in terms of lyrical virtuosity, the most astounding portrait of romance is the wistful “Caroline, No,” the album’s stunning closer. As a lamentation on a loving partner slowly becoming a stranger and the entropy of ardor, a line like, “It’s so sad to watch a sweet thing die,” perfectly communicates the bittersweet feeling of losing a former flame.
Couplets like, “Where did your long hair go/Where is the girl I used to know,” and, “Could I ever find in you again/The things that made me love you so much then,” offer rhetorical questions to devastating truths. The simple loss of innocence is emblematic of the essence of Wilson’s vision.
Other highlights include “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” which perfectly portrays disassociation from one’s era and company. Also the two instrumental cuts — the title track and “Let’s Go Away for Awhile” — offer colorful, anticipatory tonics to the oft pensive nature of the rest of the album.
Utilizing complex harmonies, challenging progressions, key changes and a host of inspired instrumental choices, Pet Sounds quietly widened the scope of pop music during its most important decade.
Pet Sounds paradoxically took rock music forward by anchoring it with classical sensibilities. The music, coupled with its recognizable yet deeply idiosyncratic songwriting, sounds just as radical today as it must have 50 years ago.
*Published in The Pitt News / May 17th, 2016
Brian Wilson’s magnum opus turned 50 years old May 16, and the record remains a remarkable listening experience even half a century out. Though The Beach Boys’ name is attached, Wilson was the predominant creative force behind the conception of the album.
Released to underwhelming critical and commercial reactions, Pet Sounds has grown on people in the past 50 years. The album was key to the development of psychedelic and progressive rock and is considered by many to be one of the greatest albums in the history of popular music. The album’s legacy and influence, as well as its obsession with love, heartbreak and the complexity of human emotion, has extended well into the 21st century.
Last year, a biopic on Wilson entitled Love and Mercy, starring Paul Dano and John Cusack, received considerable critical praise. In addition, Wilson, now 73, began his “Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary World Tour” last month, which marks the final performances of the album’s music.
A striking alteration on the band’s more radio-friendly sound, the album’s conception began in 1964, when Wilson suffered a severe panic attack on a flight following a television performance. Wilson’s damaged psyche was his excuse to forgo touring with his band mates and instead focus more intently on songwriting and recording.
In 1965, Wilson formed a collaboration with Tony Asher, who ultimately became the self-described “interpreter” of Wilson’s thematic direction for Pet Sounds. Asher put into words the sentiments Wilson wanted to convey with each song. Following Wilson’s satisfaction with “You Still Believe in Me,” the album’s second track, he decided Asher was the right fit.
Asher also showed Wilson Rubber Soul, an album by The Beatles, which became a major inspiration for the album due to its absence of filler tracks. In turn, the Fab Four would echo the influence of Pet Sounds two albums later with the avant-garde pop touchstone Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Wilson hired The Wrecking Crew, a group of session musicians famous for their work with producer Phil Spector, to record the album’s instrumentation. Backed with ravishing orchestral arrangements, Pet Sounds possesses a childlike, carnival-esque tone. The experimental instruments — from bicycle bells and dog barks to harpsichords and French horns — relay subtle psychedelic qualities, as Wilson dabbled in mind-altering substances at the time.
Considered one of the first true examples of a concept album, the ambitious revision of pop music standards in Pet Sounds is strung together by introspection and disillusioned musings on love and dejection. Wilson bears his soul in both confession and vocal performance.
Juxtaposing loneliness with dissections of romance enhances the sensation behind his ideas through contrast. The clear-eyed, unabashed honesty behind the words of Pet Sounds — especially on the subject of despondence — is met with vibrant symphonic marvels from Wilson’s arrangements and sweet melodies.
Many of the songs form meaning by discussing the foibles of romance. Though a frequent topic of pop music, Wilson manages to find fresh perspectives. In “That’s Not Me,” which analyzes the price of independence, Wilson candidly admits, “I could try to be big in the eyes of the world/What matters to me is what I could be to just one girl.” But the mawkishness that can seem overwhelming is always offset by the maturity supporting each observation.
Paul McCartney’s favorite song and masterful side-two opener “God Only Knows” takes a hopeful stance in the face of romance’s inevitable end. “Here Today” flips the point of view and is directed towards a naïve man in the midst of newfound love, “Right now you think that she’s perfection/This time is really an exception,” Mike Love sings. He was the band member least receptive to Wilson’s direction in sound.
Featuring some of the most resplendent harmonizations on Pet Sounds, the opener, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” neatly captures the innocence at the heart of Wilson’s creative voice. “I wish that every kiss was never-ending,” Wilson divulges as a young lover yearning for the freedom of adult life.
Regardless of the legacies behind masterpieces like “God Only Knows” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” the album’s most underrated offering is “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder).”
The song’s chord progressions suggest a mood both surreal and gentle, and the lyrics touch on a beauty that cannot be described in words: “I can hear so much in your sighs/And I can see so much in your eyes,” Wilson begins. The track depicts a lovely silence between romantic companions and the fruitlessness of speaking during tender moments.
“Listen, listen, listen,” Wilson implores as the bridge’s swelling strings lean back into refrain once again. Using inverted chords and challenging progressions, the peaceful churn of “Don’t Talk” is a microcosm of “Pet Sounds’” complexities.
But in terms of lyrical virtuosity, the most astounding portrait of romance is the wistful “Caroline, No,” the album’s stunning closer. As a lamentation on a loving partner slowly becoming a stranger and the entropy of ardor, a line like, “It’s so sad to watch a sweet thing die,” perfectly communicates the bittersweet feeling of losing a former flame.
Couplets like, “Where did your long hair go/Where is the girl I used to know,” and, “Could I ever find in you again/The things that made me love you so much then,” offer rhetorical questions to devastating truths. The simple loss of innocence is emblematic of the essence of Wilson’s vision.
Other highlights include “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” which perfectly portrays disassociation from one’s era and company. Also the two instrumental cuts — the title track and “Let’s Go Away for Awhile” — offer colorful, anticipatory tonics to the oft pensive nature of the rest of the album.
Utilizing complex harmonies, challenging progressions, key changes and a host of inspired instrumental choices, Pet Sounds quietly widened the scope of pop music during its most important decade.
Pet Sounds paradoxically took rock music forward by anchoring it with classical sensibilities. The music, coupled with its recognizable yet deeply idiosyncratic songwriting, sounds just as radical today as it must have 50 years ago.
*Published in The Pitt News / May 17th, 2016
Radiohead makes strong return
with A Moon Shaped Pool
England’s most perplexing rock band has finally broken its five-year silence, returning to the same hallmark glumness, lyrical oddity and eerie musicality that make up Radiohead.
After its members went their separate ways for various solo works and collaborations, Radiohead came together again to record its ninth LP, A Moon Shaped Pool, which was released at 2 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, May 8.
Yet again, the curious combination of elements from the group’s key members — multi-instrumentalist and singer Thom Yorke, guitarist-keyboardist-composer Jonny Greenwood and producer but unofficial sixth member of the band Nigel Godrich — mingle into an atmospheric whole.
Since their last album, 2011’s The King of Limbs, Yorke and Godrich have teamed with Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea to form Atoms for Peace, creating the album Amok in 2013. Greenwood provided the score for filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master in 2012, and Yorke and drummer Philip Selway each released a solo album, respectively.
In late 2014, they all kicked off months of studio work for A Moon Shaped Pool, which finds the separate musicians meshing as naturally as ever.
Wavering between lush choir and string arrangements by Greenwood and a typical offering of austere poetry from Yorke’s delicate falsetto, the new record backdrops depressive lyrics and melodies with grand-scale cinematic ambiance.
Just look to the first single, “Burn The Witch.” Radiohead released the song on May 1, a day after mailing ominous leaflets with artwork and the song’s grim lyrics to fans who had previously bought from the band.
Though not as strong an opener as many past tracks, like “15 Step” from 2007’s In Rainbows or "Everything in Its Right Place" from 2000’s Kid A, the staccato string plucks and Yorke’s croons create a restless energy, like legendary musicians trying to prove they’ve still got it. And, at least for the chorus, they do.
Greenwood utilizes music from the London Contemporary Orchestra, who he also worked with to score The Master. The orchestra has a forceful presence on the album, providing the heft behind Yorke’s central lamentations and fearful imagery while Godrich’s glitches and labyrinthine production labors fill out the edges of the sonic canvas.
Anderson also directed the music video for the band’s second single, “Daydreaming,” which debuted this past Friday. As the second track on the album, the rhythmically shifting ballad is representative of the album’s gloomier emotions, reminding listeners that this is still Radiohead.
“Deck’s Dark” and “Identikit” are the album’s strongest offerings. They have the rock elements that root Radiohead in something tangible combined with the electronic influences that have been a defining staple of the band’s sound for years.
Between the highs of meticulously engineered art-rock is Yorke making the otherwise vivacious album into something of a somber breakup record, at least in parts.
Yorke ended a 23-year relationship with the mother of his two children in August. His heartbreak is present through much of A Moon Shaped Pool, while the end of “Daydreaming” features vocals of Yorke repeating “half of my life,” over and over but slowed down and reversed. Someone in the sea of serious fans unraveled the otherwise indecipherable audio.
“True Love Waits,” a song Radiohead has kept since 1995, finally made its way onto this album as the closer, furthering the album’s lovesick subplot but providing a weak spot.
Sporting gorgeous melancholic lyrics — “True love lives on lollipops and crisps” and “I’m not living, I’m just killing time” — the song fits the album thematically, but the flow is ambiguous and confusing, and the final produced version doesn’t do the sentiments justice.
The band’s ability to be both chilling and calming is its greatest asset. The haunting milieu of The King of Limbs, their previous LP, articulated both creepy and cool vibes on a smaller, more abstract level. Here, like with In Rainbows, A Moon Shaped Pool is welcoming before it is challenging.
In “Desert Island Disk” and “The Numbers,” Yorke flexes his acoustic skill. The former is a relaxed folk song about renewal, the latter a call to global action with some of Yorke’s most straightforward lyrics: “We are of the earth, to her we do return/The future is inside us, it’s not somewhere else.”
“The Present Tense,” which has been reworked for the past several years, is a songwriting highlight, a despondent tune connected by an astonishing set of chord progressions and made immaculate by the angelic choirs. Piano parts are also present on a majority of the album’s tracks, though the gentle arpeggios of “Glassy Eyes” are the most lovely.
Trying to meet expectations time and time again must be exhausting. Yorke pokes fun at his fans and their obsessiveness in “Daydreaming,” singing, “We are happy just to serve you.” Even if the band means this sarcastically, Radiohead’s lofty reputation — especially following the self-assuredness of this LP and its warm reception — is showing little sign of wear.
Like the best of Radiohead, the split in A Moon Shaped Pool, between the real and the ethereal, is a beautiful contradiction — at once calculated and feral.
*Published in The Pitt News / May 10th, 2016
After its members went their separate ways for various solo works and collaborations, Radiohead came together again to record its ninth LP, A Moon Shaped Pool, which was released at 2 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, May 8.
Yet again, the curious combination of elements from the group’s key members — multi-instrumentalist and singer Thom Yorke, guitarist-keyboardist-composer Jonny Greenwood and producer but unofficial sixth member of the band Nigel Godrich — mingle into an atmospheric whole.
Since their last album, 2011’s The King of Limbs, Yorke and Godrich have teamed with Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea to form Atoms for Peace, creating the album Amok in 2013. Greenwood provided the score for filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master in 2012, and Yorke and drummer Philip Selway each released a solo album, respectively.
In late 2014, they all kicked off months of studio work for A Moon Shaped Pool, which finds the separate musicians meshing as naturally as ever.
Wavering between lush choir and string arrangements by Greenwood and a typical offering of austere poetry from Yorke’s delicate falsetto, the new record backdrops depressive lyrics and melodies with grand-scale cinematic ambiance.
Just look to the first single, “Burn The Witch.” Radiohead released the song on May 1, a day after mailing ominous leaflets with artwork and the song’s grim lyrics to fans who had previously bought from the band.
Though not as strong an opener as many past tracks, like “15 Step” from 2007’s In Rainbows or "Everything in Its Right Place" from 2000’s Kid A, the staccato string plucks and Yorke’s croons create a restless energy, like legendary musicians trying to prove they’ve still got it. And, at least for the chorus, they do.
Greenwood utilizes music from the London Contemporary Orchestra, who he also worked with to score The Master. The orchestra has a forceful presence on the album, providing the heft behind Yorke’s central lamentations and fearful imagery while Godrich’s glitches and labyrinthine production labors fill out the edges of the sonic canvas.
Anderson also directed the music video for the band’s second single, “Daydreaming,” which debuted this past Friday. As the second track on the album, the rhythmically shifting ballad is representative of the album’s gloomier emotions, reminding listeners that this is still Radiohead.
“Deck’s Dark” and “Identikit” are the album’s strongest offerings. They have the rock elements that root Radiohead in something tangible combined with the electronic influences that have been a defining staple of the band’s sound for years.
Between the highs of meticulously engineered art-rock is Yorke making the otherwise vivacious album into something of a somber breakup record, at least in parts.
Yorke ended a 23-year relationship with the mother of his two children in August. His heartbreak is present through much of A Moon Shaped Pool, while the end of “Daydreaming” features vocals of Yorke repeating “half of my life,” over and over but slowed down and reversed. Someone in the sea of serious fans unraveled the otherwise indecipherable audio.
“True Love Waits,” a song Radiohead has kept since 1995, finally made its way onto this album as the closer, furthering the album’s lovesick subplot but providing a weak spot.
Sporting gorgeous melancholic lyrics — “True love lives on lollipops and crisps” and “I’m not living, I’m just killing time” — the song fits the album thematically, but the flow is ambiguous and confusing, and the final produced version doesn’t do the sentiments justice.
The band’s ability to be both chilling and calming is its greatest asset. The haunting milieu of The King of Limbs, their previous LP, articulated both creepy and cool vibes on a smaller, more abstract level. Here, like with In Rainbows, A Moon Shaped Pool is welcoming before it is challenging.
In “Desert Island Disk” and “The Numbers,” Yorke flexes his acoustic skill. The former is a relaxed folk song about renewal, the latter a call to global action with some of Yorke’s most straightforward lyrics: “We are of the earth, to her we do return/The future is inside us, it’s not somewhere else.”
“The Present Tense,” which has been reworked for the past several years, is a songwriting highlight, a despondent tune connected by an astonishing set of chord progressions and made immaculate by the angelic choirs. Piano parts are also present on a majority of the album’s tracks, though the gentle arpeggios of “Glassy Eyes” are the most lovely.
Trying to meet expectations time and time again must be exhausting. Yorke pokes fun at his fans and their obsessiveness in “Daydreaming,” singing, “We are happy just to serve you.” Even if the band means this sarcastically, Radiohead’s lofty reputation — especially following the self-assuredness of this LP and its warm reception — is showing little sign of wear.
Like the best of Radiohead, the split in A Moon Shaped Pool, between the real and the ethereal, is a beautiful contradiction — at once calculated and feral.
*Published in The Pitt News / May 10th, 2016
Fifty years:
Highway 61 Revisited
Bob Dylan’s lasting impact in American pop culture used to astound me as a younger person. I tried to grasp how people thought of the nasally-voiced songwriter, on a scale of popularity or critical regard, as on par with The Beatles.
But just as The Beatles will live forever in the mind of music, so will Dylan on different terms — most notably for his masterstroke, Highway 61 Revisited, which turned 50 last week.
When you listen to his devastating words and realize the civil rights context of the album’s time is eerily similar to today, the genius of Dylan’s work — especially five decades removed — reveals itself.
Highway 61 Revisited was Dylan’s most uncompromising expression, capturing a heavier and more electric sound with a live band that came to define the progression of popular music in its rapid evolution during the mid to late ’60s. In stark contrast to the strictly folk formula of his earlier career, this departure to a more popular sound would appear to die-hard fans as more of a commercial move and less of a grand artistic statement.
The amplified sound, combined with his cryptic, hauntingly surreal lyrics, however, would elevate him from a sell-out, folk-scene pariah to an original, frighteningly compelling poet and the generation’s most inscrutable rock star.
Dylan remains one of the all-time greats of songwriting, mostly because of the mystery that surrounded his persona while recording Highway. As a young folk singer, his tact in terms of topical issues of the early ’60s, like Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement, led to the public considering him the spokesman of his generation.
The universality of his concerns — whether it be world issues or Dylan’s own “thought-dreams” — and his contributions during his youth are timeless in their urgency for music to explore more complex shapes and modes. While his early folk albums remain some of his best, his slow shift to an aggressive, fully instrumented sound both made him a controversial figure in the eye of the public and consequently produced the works that would come to cement his legacy.
Dylan cautiously tested the waters of his sonic shift. After his fourth album Another Side of Bob Dylan, which abandoned the strict protest-song focus of his lyrics, in early 1965 he released Bringing It All Back Home, the first in his famous electric trilogy. The album featured an amplified rock band on the first half of the album backing Dylan’s self-aware lyrics of his own public perception. Some of his longest lasting classics were the result, like “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
Sandwiched between this first departure and the masterful southern-fried double album Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited continues to baffle and enthrall with its lyrical complexity and musical vigor. The middle piece in this period of Dylan’s multi-faceted career would prove to be his most accessible and passionately constructed work.
From the legendary rhymes and iconic organ riff of “Like a Rolling Stone” to the monumentally powerful 11-minute finale “Desolation Row,” Highway 61 Revisited places listeners in a whirlwind of heady verses. The physical forces of his aggressive bluesy garage rock were timely and boldly forward-thinking in a time when few mainstream artists dared to write little more than straightforward doo-wop love songs.
As a man that headlined the soundtrack to the Occupy Wallstreet movement, Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues,” blends sophisticated name-dropping with absurdist imagery and, of course, social criticism. While the song isn’t as popular as “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” lines like, “and the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul to the old folks home and the college” are just as forebodingly relevant today.
The final verse of the record’s penultimate track, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” is one of his most poignant portrayals of the loneliness and isolation that comes with being the center of debate: “I started out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff / everybody said they’d stand behind me when the game got rough / but the joke was on me, there was nobody even there to bluff / I’m going back to New York City, I do believe I’ve had enough.”
The album can hardly be considered dated, particularly for its idiosyncratic take on rock music, but also because the concerns of those in 1965 match those in 2015. The underground is still fighting for equality, justice and general welfare.
Our time has no clear singular voice of our concerns in the music industry — though Kendrick Lamar or Kanye West are probably the strongest contenders — but Dylan wore the crown heavy at the age of 24. Fifty years later, Dylan must look back on the cheekiness of the line: “you would not think to look at him, but he was famous long ago…” with either fondness or slight resentment.
It must be frustrating to be chained to the accomplishments of youth and be anchored to a particular legacy and reputation, as Dylan reached the height of his powers so early into his career. But Highway 61 Revisited was glorious while it lasted, and all 51 minutes of its brutally cerebral potency is still as urgent and didactically cynical today as it was in its own era.
Published in The Pitt News / September 7th, 2015
But just as The Beatles will live forever in the mind of music, so will Dylan on different terms — most notably for his masterstroke, Highway 61 Revisited, which turned 50 last week.
When you listen to his devastating words and realize the civil rights context of the album’s time is eerily similar to today, the genius of Dylan’s work — especially five decades removed — reveals itself.
Highway 61 Revisited was Dylan’s most uncompromising expression, capturing a heavier and more electric sound with a live band that came to define the progression of popular music in its rapid evolution during the mid to late ’60s. In stark contrast to the strictly folk formula of his earlier career, this departure to a more popular sound would appear to die-hard fans as more of a commercial move and less of a grand artistic statement.
The amplified sound, combined with his cryptic, hauntingly surreal lyrics, however, would elevate him from a sell-out, folk-scene pariah to an original, frighteningly compelling poet and the generation’s most inscrutable rock star.
Dylan remains one of the all-time greats of songwriting, mostly because of the mystery that surrounded his persona while recording Highway. As a young folk singer, his tact in terms of topical issues of the early ’60s, like Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement, led to the public considering him the spokesman of his generation.
The universality of his concerns — whether it be world issues or Dylan’s own “thought-dreams” — and his contributions during his youth are timeless in their urgency for music to explore more complex shapes and modes. While his early folk albums remain some of his best, his slow shift to an aggressive, fully instrumented sound both made him a controversial figure in the eye of the public and consequently produced the works that would come to cement his legacy.
Dylan cautiously tested the waters of his sonic shift. After his fourth album Another Side of Bob Dylan, which abandoned the strict protest-song focus of his lyrics, in early 1965 he released Bringing It All Back Home, the first in his famous electric trilogy. The album featured an amplified rock band on the first half of the album backing Dylan’s self-aware lyrics of his own public perception. Some of his longest lasting classics were the result, like “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
Sandwiched between this first departure and the masterful southern-fried double album Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited continues to baffle and enthrall with its lyrical complexity and musical vigor. The middle piece in this period of Dylan’s multi-faceted career would prove to be his most accessible and passionately constructed work.
From the legendary rhymes and iconic organ riff of “Like a Rolling Stone” to the monumentally powerful 11-minute finale “Desolation Row,” Highway 61 Revisited places listeners in a whirlwind of heady verses. The physical forces of his aggressive bluesy garage rock were timely and boldly forward-thinking in a time when few mainstream artists dared to write little more than straightforward doo-wop love songs.
As a man that headlined the soundtrack to the Occupy Wallstreet movement, Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues,” blends sophisticated name-dropping with absurdist imagery and, of course, social criticism. While the song isn’t as popular as “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” lines like, “and the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul to the old folks home and the college” are just as forebodingly relevant today.
The final verse of the record’s penultimate track, “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” is one of his most poignant portrayals of the loneliness and isolation that comes with being the center of debate: “I started out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff / everybody said they’d stand behind me when the game got rough / but the joke was on me, there was nobody even there to bluff / I’m going back to New York City, I do believe I’ve had enough.”
The album can hardly be considered dated, particularly for its idiosyncratic take on rock music, but also because the concerns of those in 1965 match those in 2015. The underground is still fighting for equality, justice and general welfare.
Our time has no clear singular voice of our concerns in the music industry — though Kendrick Lamar or Kanye West are probably the strongest contenders — but Dylan wore the crown heavy at the age of 24. Fifty years later, Dylan must look back on the cheekiness of the line: “you would not think to look at him, but he was famous long ago…” with either fondness or slight resentment.
It must be frustrating to be chained to the accomplishments of youth and be anchored to a particular legacy and reputation, as Dylan reached the height of his powers so early into his career. But Highway 61 Revisited was glorious while it lasted, and all 51 minutes of its brutally cerebral potency is still as urgent and didactically cynical today as it was in its own era.
Published in The Pitt News / September 7th, 2015