The Ugly Organ is the most self-loathing album I have ever heard in my life, and I love it.

The album starts with a slide of organ keys into a carnival melody that sounds like riding a merry-go-round on the second circle of hell—“The Ugly Organist”—complete with faint screaming that builds to a shrill fever pitch before being abruptly cut off by four angry cracks of a snare drum into a burst of discordant guitars asphyxiated by an oppressive cello being bowed at breakneck speed. Within the barely two-minute runtime of “Some Red Handed Sleight of Hand,” Tim Kasher sings—atop frantic cello, organ fire, and violent drums—over 150 words comparing himself to a hypocritical reverend who “spews his sweet and salty sermon on the audience” whilst not following a single word of his own advice; Kasher then asks himself: “Why do I think I’m any different? I’ve been making money on my indifference.”

“Sing along, I'm on the ugly organ again. Sing along, I'm on the ugly organ, so let's begin.”

This is the crux of the record: a vicious attack on the self. The Ugly Organ is a record that hates itself—and I mean, really hates itself—led by a frontman who despises everything that he’s doing and more, which is namely selling his own heartache via records and show tickets, drawing inspiration from his own recent bitter divorce^#1 and sometimes just manufacturing his own misfortune, all to keep the fans screaming his band's name at shows, which makes him feel sick. And even though he hates himself for it, he keeps doing it anyway. The Ugly Organ is an exploration of the concept of selling out, told from the perspective of a self-aware sellout who wants to stop selling out but just can’t help himself. The Ugly Organ is an album about creating art not for yourself, but for others—for fame, fortune, and validation. This is a concept album through and through, written as a tragedy to be performed on a stage, with each sorry track transitioning into the next like one scene to another. But it’s not just a concept album—it's a message that any artist can relate to. It feels autobiographical. It feels deeply personal. It feels real.

“A couple hymns of confession, and songs that recognize our sick obsessions.”

“Some Red Handed Sleight of Hand” flows into “Art is Hard,” and this is where the gloves come off and all is laid bare. “Art is Hard” fully utilizes Gretta Cohn’s mastery of the cello to create a bleak baroque tragedy, like looking into a circus mirror and seeing only a twisted monster staring back—a twisted monster that claims they’re an artist but is actually a total fraud playing pretend. Kasher yells scathing rebukes in the third person, but he's not kidding anyone; he proclaims that he “falls in love to fail, to boost his CD sales” and that “the crowds may be catching on to the self-inflicted songs” and that he has to “sink to swim” and that he has to keep “regurgitating sorry tales about a boy who sells his love affairs” and that he has to “impersonate greater persons” because “we all know art is hard when we don’t know who we are,” because, at the end of the day, when you get on the stage and the crowd screams your name—“Oh, Cursive is so cool!”—it all just feels so good, and you are driven to repeat yourself over and over. This is all laced with thick irony, and wrapped in both post-punk and hardcore sensibilities with staccato cello edge and jarring, banshee-like guitar tones, amounting to a full-on attack of the senses, equal parts aural and psychic as hell. And this bitter questioning of self—this sordid tale of self-loathing and selling out—is one of the most popular songs on the record, the type of song that inspires real people in real crowds to shout “Cursive is so cool!” during the “Cursive is so cool!” part, without realizing the irony made manifest by doing the very thing that the lyrics are so contemptuous of.

“Keep churning out those hits, 'til it's all the same old shit.”

Cursive came to prominence in the early 2000s alongside groups like The Faint and the now-legendary Bright Eyes, the latter of which led by Conor Oberst, all of which were on the same label, Saddle Creek, founded by Justin Oberst—Conor’s brother—which formed a small collective of talented musicians from Omaha, Nebraska. Bright Eyes, with their soft acoustics, dubious saccharinity, and Conor’s uniquely poetic lyricism reminiscent of a drug-addled schoolboy with well-off parents who is also incurably white and very much wants to be Bob Dylan, landed Saddle Creek smack dab in Midwest Suburban Whiteboy Emo Music of Middling Quality territory, which wasn’t far from the truth at first. But after about three minutes into The Ugly Organ, anyone familiar with Cursive's previous three albums could tell something very weird was going on; we weren't in Nebraska anymore: this wasn’t the High School True Love Break Up music people had come to expect from Saddle Creek; this was Hate Myself for Singing High School True Love Break Up Music music accompanied by a crazy talented orchestra of ego-shredding strings and hellfire organs.

“Cut it out, your self-inflicted pain, is getting too routine.”

With the fourth track on the album—”The Recluse”—Tim Kasher goes right back to his old tricks, singing of the same sordid love affairs that he criticized just moments ago. “The Recluse” is a softer composition more reminiscent of what Saddle Creek listeners have come to expect, only with a jarring sparseness like that of The Cure’s “Lullaby,” with a picked guitar lead that lulls you into an intricate web and long-drawn cello notes like the theme song of the black recluse that's about to eat you. The whole thing is like being blissfully unaware that you're being devoured after being slowly swathed and made stupid with venom.

“You're in my web now. I’ve come to wrap you up tight 'til it’s time to bite down.”

I fell into the web of The Ugly Organ early in life. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1991, where I was surrounded by a confusing dichotomy of So So Def hip-hop and deep south country music, of which I’ve had my fill. (And decades later, these genres converged into the horrifying chimera of “country rap,” which I try to avoid like a pox.) When my mother moved closer to Florida in 2004, to a town with its own venue for hardcore shows, I fell in with the burgeoning “scene” crowd and discovered a multitude of bands I had never heard before, many of which were either too loud—Underoath, Alexisonfire, Chiodos—or too soft—Bright Eyes, Dashboard Confessional, Iron & Wine—or just too embarrassing—The Starting Line, Hawthorne Heights, Matchbook Romance—for me to truly get into. But, of course, as an impressionable thirteen-year-old kid, I pretended to like them all. I was a chameleon. I wanted to fit in so badly. I pretended so hard that I got a full-body picture of myself on a two-page spread dedicated to the “scene/emo phenomenon” in my school’s yearbook—I was the only picture—with labels and arrows pointing to my ripped-at-the-knees skinny jeans, long-in-the-front-short-in-the-back swoop haircut, patched-and-pinned messenger bag, and forlorn expression as if my still-beating heart had just been torn straight from my chest. (No, I am not making this up.) And, of course, I was embarrassed by the whole yearbook thing immediately after agreeing to do it and, as such, didn’t buy a copy; and I couldn’t find the thing online—so, unfortunately for you, dear reader, I don’t have that very mortifying picture to share with you, but the whole thing does illustrate that I had some self-awareness of my own fakery, even at a young age. But, regardless of all that, I liked to think that I was more than just some scenester, as I had a broader taste in music than the average “emo” kid, having dabbled in 80s pop and art rock for some time after a brief obsession with in-game just-driving-around-listening-to-the-very-80s-radio in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for hours while being high on child-approved amphetamines. What I’m trying to get at is: I was ripe for The Ugly Organ when it was released in 2003, but it was very much the black sheep of the emo scene at that time; everyone liked “The Recluse” and “Art is Hard,” but the rest of the album was considered kinda strange by the scenester elite, a bit too high-brow, a bit too artsy. But it wasn’t too high-brow for me—I was primed for The Ugly Organ, and it quickly became one of my favorite albums; and, at the time, I thought I understood it—the fact that Tim Kasher could point to himself and say what I heard as, “I’m a monster, haha! Look how self-aware I am! It’s cool to hate yourself!” was, to me, very cool indeed.

“They want to hear my deepest sins, the songs from The Ugly Organ.”

“Herald! Frankenstein” and “Butcher the Song” follow “The Recluse” as a return to the introspective self-loathing from earlier on the record, as if apologizing for regurgitating the same sordid-love-affair bullshit that he so strongly lambasted just minutes before. “Herald! Frankenstein” serves as the interlude to “Butcher the Song,” which is three minutes of the most woe-is-me, self-revulsion ever captured on an early 2000s emo-adjacent recording; the introduction, with cello like the stalking of a great white shark accented with echoing steel percussion, creates a harrowing atmosphere of anticipatory dread before exploding in the same dreadful cadence atop Kasher’s lyrical butcher knife that relentlessly hacks away at his own contrived persona. Before this, it could have been argued that the songs were about a character—The Ugly Organist—but this facade slips away as Kasher tears down the fourth wall and starts referring to himself directly: “So rub it in with your dumb lyrics. Yeah, that's the time and place to wring out your bullshit. And each album I'll get shit on a little more, 'Whose Tim's latest whore? Now, that's not fair—no, that's just obscene. I'll stop speaking for you if you stop speaking for me.” The veil has been lifted. The Ugly Organist is speaking directly on behalf of Tim, or vice versa—it’s impossible to tell because they’re both the same person.

“What a day to sever such ugly extremities. ‘What a lovely day,’ says the butcher as he raises his arm.”

Tim then turns around and does the exact same thing he was so critical of—again—belting out two more ballads about failed relationships. “Driftwood: A Fairy Tale” churns with the same lullaby energy as “The Recluse,” only this time comparing himself to Pinocchio in a relationship in which the spark has died, and he is now bored of his partner but insists that nothing is wrong while continuing to lie about still being in love, his nose growing each time he “proves it,” before being found out and cast out to sea as driftwood. “A Gentleman Caller” follows like a hurricane of punches to the face, the cello being bowed so aggressively that it sounds like a trumpet and the distortion on the guitar amp turned to eleven in what amounts to my favorite song on the record; a three-minute mood swing, the first half representing the visceral beginnings of a love affair both musically and literally—”You say you want to get even? You say you want to get your bad man good? Well, are you in the mood?”—where the guitar and the cello converge so well that it’s almost impossible to figure out where one ends and the other begins; and the second half representing the somber morning after, regretfully lying in bed next to the gentleman caller who just smooth-talked you into one of the biggest mistakes of your life.

“I'm not looking for a lover, all those lovers are liars…”

“A Gentleman Caller,” “Driftwood: A Fairytale,” and “The Recluse” can be taken as examples of the sellout songs Kasher bemoans on “Art is Hard”; songs about personal love affairs and misery that cash in and boost record sales, all designed to be chanted by an audience of sycophants; and considering the context these songs find themselves in bed with, it’s not a coincidence that they function in this manner. These songs were perfectly positioned to be catchy, emo-adjacent, chantable hits containing subject matter that the fans wanted, but they are positioned within such a clever milieu of self-awareness and loathing that it makes the songs feel as if they’re tongue-in-cheek and fully aware of themselves. Tim Kasher knows what he’s doing; he’s playing the audience a little bit, but he’s also using this vehicle of self-hatred to continue doing what he has always done: sing about the misery he so hates to sing about. In a way, he’s found a clever way to cheat the system. The Ugly Organ proves this out with every song; it is one of the most self-hating, woe-is-me albums ever recorded—and, in a way, one of the most self-indulgent albums ever recorded because of it. It is so steeped in Tim Kasher’s own self that, on the surface, it’s hard not to see The Ugly Organ as some sort of post hoc justification of his own bullshit. But is it really that shallow? Is it that easy to hand-wave away? Well, I’ve only covered the first half of the record—and I’m not about to come to your own conclusions for you.

“My ego's like my stomach, it keeps shitting what I feed it.”

In many ways, Cursive’s The Ugly Organ and I were made for each other. We're both unflaggingly self-aware, cynical, and critical of everything—especially ourselves. If you have read any of my previous work, you know that it's steeped in self-hatred, self-mockery, and critical—sometimes unfair—analysis of my own bullshit, while at the same time bemoaning the fact that I can’t seem to shut up about those same things; as if one of the many reasons I hate myself is because these are the only things I have to talk about, and The Ugly Organ sits in that same psychic space. The Ugly Organ and I are a match made in heaven. And when I first heard The Ugly Organ—when I was much younger—I thought I had the album all figured out. I thought it was very cool to hate myself, to point out my own flaws and revel in the fact that I was able to detest myself with such poignant clarity; in a way, I still think it’s cool: I have the utmost respect for those who are brutally honest about themselves, those who know their own bullshit and call it out, and this is certainly one of the appeals of The Ugly Organ. But simply being able to point these things out isn’t cool in and of itself—it’s only cool when you do something productive with that information. You can't wallow in self-hatred forever—you would stagnate, get nothing done, and drag everyone down around you. You have to do something with the negative energy—you have to use it to build a better you.

“The organ’s playing my song, but this song’s gone on too long.”

It tracks that the more self-aware an animal becomes, the more they tend to hate themselves. Surely, the human condition is a complicated thing, counterintuitive almost. We are born into these flesh balloons packed full of mushy organs, all working in tandem to keep us alive, but one of these organs seemingly works against our best interest, enabling us to hate ourselves, makes us want to die; that ugly organ is none other than the brain. The fact that the brain can make us loathe ourselves with every fiber of our being seems to contradict the perhaps evolutionary drive to not suck on the end of a revolver and end it all. But underneath great ugliness is often some terrible truth just waiting to be uncovered. Maybe the brain, when it tells us something horrible about ourselves, is trying to show us something, something true about ourselves, something that needs to be addressed, something that needs to be changed. Maybe the ugly organ is only ugly so that we may use that ugliness as motivation to better ourselves and the world around us.

Or maybe Cursive’s The Ugly Organ is literally just about large keyboards with pipes—who knows?

References:

#1. https://www.talkhouse.com/artist/tim-kasher/

#Music #Cursive #Autobiographical

White Freckles is a psychedelic pop song written by singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist-whatever Ariel Pink and co-written by the mysterious Kenny Gilmore, credited for drums, backing vocals, bass, keyboards, engineering, and editing as noted in the liner notes of Ariel Pink’s 2014 album Pom Pom of which White Freckles is the second track.

Before we begin, I encourage you to listen to White Freckles here, and don’t worry, this links to the Internet Archive, so you are doing no favors to Mr. Pink by clicking this link. In addition, the effectiveness of this article is heightened if you are not already familiar with Ariel Pink, but, knowing my audience (all three people or so), that’s probably not going to be the case. Regardless, give White Freckles a listen, preferably all the way through; then come back and start reading from here.

Well, do you hear it? That manic, jerky guitar line alternating between 6/4 and 4/4 over pounding snares? That bass line mirroring the spastic guitar whilst simultaneously managing to sneak in contraband notes between the jerky pauses, all while maintaining the funk? The whole thing sounds like it was captured with a cassette recorder in a bubble dome underwater; and do you hear when the timing sludges out during the verses and Ariel’s vocals come in, alternating between The Human League and some sort of unhinged Madonna impersonator, as if multiple characters are mocking or admiring (you can’t really tell) someone’s application of white-freckle makeup that they may or may not have gotten at the tanning salon? Of course you hear it, it’s White Freckles. All this, mixed with just a hint of cheap-voice-changing robotics and that middle-eight-interlude thing that feels like the music is being fed through a hurricane of lost-media sound effects and then fed through a vacuum cleaner, makes the whole thing sound as if it fell out of an alternate reality wormhole where the 1980s never ended and arcades still bleeped and booped around every corner and Patrick Nagel’s artwork was plastered on every billboard in every city of the world.

White Freckles is maniacal, mathematical, mechanical, memetic, both merry and a little bit maudlin, and just a knock-out masterpiece of a pop song. It’s also kinda silly. Everyone that I’ve played this song to, I’ve caught them, later on, sometimes days later, “do-do-do-do-do”ing or repeating “freckles, freckles, where’d you get those freckles?” as if Ariel himself was inside their brain pulling little levers like a cartoon villain. The music digs in and refuses to budge. You have to excavate it with another song of equal catchiness – and that’s hard to do, because White Freckles is very catchy indeed.

But, despite all that, this article isn’t really about White Freckles – all my homies love White Freckles, that’s not really up for debate.

And while all my homies may love White Freckles, they really fucking hate Ariel Pink – and that’s what this article is actually about.

Now that you’ve listened to White Freckles and read a few paragraphs of me gushing about it, and assuming you liked the song (which this whole shtick kinda hinges on), check out this quote from Ariel Pink.

“I’m so gay for Trump, I would let him fuck me in the butt.” -Ariel Pink (Jan 4, 2021. 1:01:10. some podcast interview)

*they really do

Yes, that’s Ariel Pink on Fox News, talking to Tucker Carlson about how he was “unfairly canceled” for attending the January 6th Trump rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol building. He claims he was there just for a “peaceful rally,” and that despite this, his record label, Mexican Summer, dropped him and he was ostracized from the music industry entirely. “It was cancel culture; the woke mob,” he says. And no, the quote above is not a meme or a joke, Ariel Pink is a huge MAGA guy. He spouts every single talking point verbatim: climate change denial, extreme vaccine skepticism (even though Trump supported and fast-tracked the development of the vaccines initially [source]; one of the many examples illustrating Republicans’ really bad memory and complete lack of principles), and the rest of the whole pantheon of dumb things. Ariel Pink was also accused of physically and sexually abusing his former bandmate and girlfriend, Charlotte Ercoli Coe. And I’m sure you could find more awful stuff on Pink if you went digging for it online.

I’m being kinda flippant about the various charges levied at Ariel Pink here (it’s all a matter of public record, really: every music outlet reported on this, even non-music publications like Variety and the LA Times), because this stuff isn’t actually all that important to the article. We could say that, hypothetically, Ariel Pink tossed puppies off bridges for fun and did all sorts of heinous Judge Holden-like things, if we wanted to. But, outside of these being the reasons that all my homies hate Ariel Pink, the reasons themselves don’t matter all that much. The reasons are not really what I want to write about. We all know that Ariel Pink’s worldview and the accusations surrounding him are capital-N capital-G No Good, and I shouldn’t have to convince anyone otherwise.

What I want to write about is White Freckles. I know, I know I said White Freckles wasn’t really the point of this article, and it’s not. What I really want to write about is the question around White Freckles. That being, you listened to White Freckles, you presumably liked White Freckles, but now that you’ve heard about Ariel Pink and his warped worldview and all the sexual abuse, you probably don’t like White Freckles all that much anymore – do you? You at least like it a little less than you did initially. You probably scrunched up your face and almost gagged at all the MAGA-sexual-abuse stuff, like I did. And that scrunchy-face outrage has been transferred to the music. White Freckles feels like a MAGA song now. But what I’m curious about is, why?

That’s what I want to write about.

The moment Ariel Pink showed up on Tucker Carlson Tonight, I knew that something had changed. I was a loose fan of Ariel Pink before all the accusations and the MAGA stuff, but after that fateful night I didn’t know what to do. The pioneer of hypnagogic pop had betrayed us. The entire fanbase immediately moved against Pink, which was understandable, and suddenly listening to Ariel Pink’s music felt like some sort of tacit admittance that you yourself might maybe just be a MAGA Trump nazi too and that maybe you should be shunned from every platform as well. The same thing happened with Morrissey of The Smiths, after he made racist comments publicly numerous times (another matter of public record); and a similar thing happened with R. Kelly (this one is really bad, look it up); and I’m sure the list goes on. To this day, if you post a link to a Morrissey song – or even The Smiths – on any social media platform, someone is going to reply with some vitriolic comment about Morrissey, and if that vitriolic person was following you before, they probably aren’t following you now because they saw your enjoyment of Interesting Drug as tacit support of Morrissey’s racism. (I can’t dislike Interesting Drug, that rockabilly semi-muted guitar stuff going on at the beginning is just wild.)

Did the quality of White Freckles change because Ariel Pink did something bad years after recording the song? Or was the song always tainted, and I was just a worse person for liking the song back then? And now, upon receiving this new information on Ariel Pink, should I stop liking the song, declare it “bad” just like Ariel Pink is “bad?” (Note, I am using the term “bad” here very loosely; you and I both know that calling music “good” and “bad” is near meaningless because it’s mostly a subjective preference, but I think you know what I am trying to get at here, as we probably hold similar values around most things if you happened to stumble upon this article at all; “bad” in this context means “MAGA-fascist-supporting ideological ruin” or something; you know: bad.) If I continue to like White Freckles, despite knowing this new information, am I somehow supporting Ariel Pink, endorsing and perpetuating his twisted worldview? If so, should I then reevaluate all the music I listen to and all the computer games I play and all the books I read from the lens of “did the creator(s) do something awful in the past and/or do they have politics I don’t agree with?” And, if so, I expect that this list will quickly become unmanageable, plus imagine all the mental effort I would have to expend just to maintain such a list. Something about this line of reasoning feels way off. Clearly the content of the actual song – the composition of the thing – has not changed. White Freckles has, and always will be, White Freckles.

It’s another thing entirely to buy Ariel Pink’s music, or donate to him on Patreon or listen to him on streaming platforms, as all of this supports Ariel Pink directly, and maybe you don’t want to support Ariel Pink. I don’t want to support him either. I pirated all his stuff, downloaded it all on Soulseek. Ariel Pink doesn’t get a penny from me. But there could be a deeper argument here, that even posting this article about Ariel Pink, or gushing about White Freckles, could possibly maybe support Ariel Pink in some roundabout way because someone might read this article and then be inspired to listen to Ariel Pink’s music on a streaming platform or, heaven forbidden, buy one of his records from his Bandcamp or something; and I don’t really have a good counter to that argument other than the fact that I am straight-up saying NO. Do. Not. Do. That. Do not give Ariel Pink money. The bright side (in this specific case, not overall) is that modern music streaming platforms are practically robbing artists anyway, so even if you did listen to Ariel Pink on Spotify – or whatever happens to be the popular streaming zeitgeist at the time of your reading this – you won't be supporting him much at all really.

Here's a stuffy quote from an old dead guy that may or may not have actually existed:

“It does not follow that because a particular work of art succeeds in charming us, its creator also deserves our admiration.” – Plutarch, Greek philosopher and historian

We don't have to like Ariel Pink, in fact, all my homies hate Ariel Pink.

There’s a discussion here about “separating the art from the artist,” and that’s a valid discussion, but it has been beaten to death, resurrected, and beaten to death again, multiple times. I will try to add my own twist on this zombified discussion, but I’m sure whatever I write here has already been written elsewhere. There’s an almost supernatural element to human creation; everything I write just kinda comes out and I can’t reproduce it later on; once the art has been released by the artist, it takes on a life of its own; the art, once birthed, becomes both solidified and open to interpretation, a state of contradictory flux; an artist's work can even be used against the artist later on in the event that the artist abandons previously held values. Artists can change, but the art itself cannot. And our interpretation of art can change, but the art itself is unchanging. The Mona Lisa will always be the Mona Lisa. Ariel Pink could rerecord White Freckles and add several MAGA verses, but that would not be White Freckles anymore; that would be the rerecorded MAGA-version of White Freckles, and I would not like or support that version.

We don't have to like Ariel Pink. We can refuse to support Ariel Pink while simultaneously loving White Freckles. We shouldn’t let Ariel Pink take White Freckles from us. We shouldn’t give him that much power.

#Music #ArielPink #Ethics #Essay

(Note: This article was written in 2008 for an old Blogspot music blog that I managed (flyingairplane.blogspot.com); meaning, I was 18 years old when I wrote this. The blog's format was such that each article contained a short “review” of an album and a download link to the full album (usually through Mediafire). Blogspot was a go-to source for obscure music back in 2008, with many blogs like this popping up with download links, and I wanted to be part of the illegal-music-download literati myself. Unfortunately, this blatant violation of copyright eventually caught up with the blog (and most others of its ilk) and got it removed from the Blogspot service entirely; however, the first page of the blog remains archived through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.)

---

Felt's “Poem of the River” is the follow up album to “Forever Breathes the Lonely Word”. It's pretty, shimmering, and slow... and I mean really slow. Out of the six songs on this album there's not one that instantly catches my attention, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a nice album to play while you're doing other things, very peaceful and soothing... but that's the most I can say about it.

#music #felt

(Note: This article was written in 2008 for an old Blogspot music blog that I managed (flyingairplane.blogspot.com); meaning, I was 18 years old when I wrote this. The blog's format was such that each article contained a short “review” of an album and a download link to the full album (usually through Mediafire). Blogspot was a go-to source for obscure music back in 2008, with many blogs like this popping up with download links, and I wanted to be part of the illegal-music-download literati myself. Unfortunately, this blatant violation of copyright eventually caught up with the blog (and most others of its ilk) and got it removed from the Blogspot service entirely; however, the first page of the blog remains archived through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.)

---

If you haven't noticed, Felt is one of my favorite bands... that explains why I'm uploading every Felt album (besides The Splendour of Fear, because I bought it off iTunes and can't find it anywhere else.) With that being said... on with the review of The Pictorial Jackson Review. To make it short and sweet, The Pictorial Jackson Review is a great album. I can listen to it all the way through, hum the lyrics, and even occasionally dance along with it while playing air guitar or air keyboard. In my opinion, this album is the definition of a pop album. Lawrence obviously aimed to make a pop album with this one, and since Lawrence is so quirky, he even added two completely instrumental tracks at the end of the album (one being twelve minutes long) just to fuck with our heads. In addition to that, just to add, the guitar in the song Don't Die On My Doorstep* sounds eerily similar to the guitar in the song Centerfold by the J Geils Band, I don't know if anyone else noticed that. In conclusion, The Pictorial Jackson Review is a great poppy record... it's quirky, witty, funny at times, and overall very upbeat (if you ignore the last two tracks, which aren't bad, but they're just not exactly 'upbeat'.) To me, the record records Felt evolving from the music they once made (Strange Idols, Ignite, Forever Breathes, etc.) A Felt fan can probably tell that Lawrence (and the rest of the band, I suppose) tried to take a different approach to song writing this time around, and although it's not altogether perfect, it's still a stellar record. The last two tracks foreshadow what Felt's next album (Trains Above the City) would sound like, and the rest of the album foreshadows what Felt's final album (Me and a Monkey on the Moon) would sound like. Also, Lawrence sings a bit more melodically on this album, making him sound sort of like a young Lou Reed... or an older Lou Reed impersonator.

#music #felt

(Note: This article was written in 2008 for an old Blogspot music blog that I managed (flyingairplane.blogspot.com); meaning, I was 18 years old when I wrote this. The blog's format was such that each article contained a short “review” of an album and a download link to the full album (usually through Mediafire). Blogspot was a go-to source for obscure music back in 2008, with many blogs like this popping up with download links, and I wanted to be part of the illegal-music-download literati myself. Unfortunately, this blatant violation of copyright eventually caught up with the blog (and most others of its ilk) and got it removed from the Blogspot service entirely; however, the first page of the blog remains archived through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.)

---

I guess Lawrence was just bored, or maybe he was working on other things… but Train Above the City is entirely not composed by Lawrence. I suppose Martin Duffy composed the music, since it seems that Martin Duffy is perhaps the only musician who played on this album. The funny thing is, Lawrence named all of the songs, and brilliantly I might add: Press Softly on the Breaks Holly, Teargardens, Book of Swords, etc. Firstly, the music is mediocre at best. I'm not going to lie and say “best Felt album!” just because Lawrence declared it his favorite in some lo-fi interview. The whole album is instrumental; every song is a little piano ditty that makes you feel like you're in a bar full of old hipsters drinking martinis and what not. Perhaps Lawrence just thought that releasing this album would have been a clever thing to do. I mean, it's obvious that Lawrence was trying to maintain indie stardom… and perhaps “Forever Breathes the Lonely Word” and “The Pictorial Jackson Review” was making Felt a little bit too popular for his liking…

#Music #Felt

(Note: This article was written in 2008 for an old Blogspot music blog that I managed (flyingairplane.blogspot.com); meaning, I was 18 years old when I wrote this. The blog's format was such that each article contained a short “review” of an album and a download link to the full album (usually through Mediafire). Blogspot was a go-to source for obscure music back in 2008, with many blogs like this popping up with download links, and I wanted to be part of the illegal-music-download literati myself. Unfortunately, this blatant violation of copyright eventually caught up with the blog (and most others of its ilk) and got it removed from the Blogspot service entirely; however, the first page of the blog remains archived through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.)

---

I know this album, at least for me, was impossible to find on any blog out there, so I’m being nice and uploading it on mine. It’s not my favorite Associates album [Sulk is], but it’s very ambitious. Billy Mackenzie and Alan Rankine set a very high bar when making this album that might be hard to overcome when making future albums. The sound is far more post-punkesque, whatever that means, than their later albums, which eventually evolve into synth-pop music.

#Music #TheAssociates

(Note: This article was written in 2008 for an old Blogspot music blog that I managed (flyingairplane.blogspot.com); meaning, I was 18 years old when I wrote this. The blog's format was such that each article contained a short “review” of an album and a download link to the full album (usually through Mediafire). Blogspot was a go-to source for obscure music back in 2008, with many blogs like this popping up with download links, and I wanted to be part of the illegal-music-download literati myself. Unfortunately, this blatant violation of copyright eventually caught up with the blog (and most others of its ilk) and got it removed from the Blogspot service entirely; however, the first page of the blog remains archived through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.)

---

Sulk is by far The Associates best album. It shows the band molding itself from a post-punk band into a band that fuses post-punk influences and synth-pop influences into something beautiful. The album features some extremely upbeat songs, and also some extremely gloomy songs. Compositionally the album is extremely mature, we can thank Alan Rankine for that, who plays the guitars, keyboards, and various other instruments. On top of the complexity, Billy Mackenzie's voice makes the album quite the spectacle, turning otherwise typical synth-pop sounding music into something powerful and operatic. This album is full of poppy hits, including “Party Fears Two”, which is arguably The Associates most renowned song. “18 Carat Love Affair” is another highlight from the album, the keyboards are beautiful and Billy's voice really shines, working it's way perfectly within the blasting synth, funky bassline, and pounding drums. Sulk really shows The Associates at their best, no doubt in my mind about that. [Side note: I think the version of “Sulk” that I uploaded has a sort of strange track-listing, below is the list of tracks on the album... I think it might be a combination of the original UK release and the 2000 reissue of the album. Either way, every song from the album is on it, plus extras.]

#music #TheAssociates

(Note: This article was written in 2008 for an old Blogspot music blog that I managed (flyingairplane.blogspot.com); meaning, I was 18 years old when I wrote this. The blog's format was such that each article contained a short “review” of an album and a download link to the full album (usually through Mediafire). Blogspot was a go-to source for obscure music back in 2008, with many blogs like this popping up with download links, and I wanted to be part of the illegal-music-download literati myself. Unfortunately, this blatant violation of copyright eventually caught up with the blog (and most others of its ilk) and got it removed from the Blogspot service entirely; however, the first page of the blog remains archived through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.)

---

Certainly a cult classic. Teenage Fanclub went out on a limb here to create one fuck of a brilliant power-pop record. Inspired by Big Star, Dinosaur Jr, and the likes, this album showcases Teenage Fanclub at their best. Far more commercial friendly than “A Catholic Education” (though, that remains my favorite Teenage Fanclub album). Overall, this is a great fucking album. Pure power-pop from start to finish. The highlights include What You Do to Me, The Concept, I Don't Know, and Star Sign. If you're just getting into Teenage Fanclub, this is a great place to start.

#music #TeenageFanclub

(Note: This article was written in 2008 for an old Blogspot music blog that I managed (flyingairplane.blogspot.com); meaning, I was 18 years old when I wrote this. The blog's format was such that each article contained a short “review” of an album and a download link to the full album (usually through Mediafire). Blogspot was a go-to source for obscure music back in 2008, with many blogs like this popping up with download links, and I wanted to be part of the illegal-music-download literati myself. Unfortunately, this blatant violation of copyright eventually caught up with the blog (and most others of its ilk) and got it removed from the Blogspot service entirely; however, the first page of the blog remains archived through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.)

---

All I can say about this album is that it's brilliant. Produced by John Cale of The Velvet Underground, excellently. Very amateur and charming, most of the songs being about girlfriends or wanting a girlfriend. Roadrunner starts off the album, a fast tempo garage rock song that makes you feel like you're right in front of the band experiencing their energy. I'm Straight and Pablo Picasso will make you grin, while Government Center and Old World will make you dance.

Download (Still up!)

#music #TheModernLovers