Now Who’s the Fortunate Son?

Hey, interesting Rock Band DLC. I missed you. If you don’t remember, when the first Rock Band came out, one of the earliest DLC songs was a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.” That’s right, a cover. That was a different time indeed. Now, two years and hundreds of songs later, CCR is back with a vengeance. And they’re bringing the original version of “Fortunate Son” along for the ride.

Launching next week is a 12 song pack of CCR’s greatest hits. This comes after this week’s Nickelback pack, so good on Harmonix for quickly restoring the faith. I’ll be honest, it’s been a while since I was serious about CCR, but this feels like a pretty good collection of songs. Is it missing anything? The one that comes to mind for me is “Have You Ever Seen the Rain.”

“Bad Moon Rising”
“Born on the Bayou”
“Down on the Corner”
“Fortunate Son (Original Version)”
“Green River”
“I Heard It Through the Grapevine”
“Lookin’ Out My Back Door”
“Proud Mary”
“Run Through the Jungle”
“Travelin’ Band”
“Up Around the Bend”
“Who’ll Stop the Rain”

The pack’s $20, so maybe some day I’ll be able to afford it.

Guitars And Generals

Titus Andronicus – The Monitor

As much as I love the new album by The National, it’s not really a suitable “summer album”, it’s more of something you listen to during the autumn and winter months. So instead the album that’s been my go-to album for the summer so far has been Titus Andronicus’s ragged rock n’ roll opus, The Monitor.

You could certainly label The Monitor as a “concept album” in a sense, as much of it uses the American Civil War as a unifying thematic device. The album is peppered with spoken quotes from Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in a Ken Burns-y kind of way, and it’s kind of odd how well these speeches work in the context of the album. The lyrical content of the album isn’t even really about the Civil War, most of the songs are youthful anthems about growing up in New Jersey, but somehow it all works.

Musically, the album draws a lot more from the raw energy of punk than you’d find in most indie music nowadays, and I’m always open to an indie band that dares to rock. In fact, the first time I heard this album I was completely floored by how much this band rocks the fuck out of the first three tracks. And after that, they manage to find a nice middle ground with songs that have a sprawling, almost Springsteen-ian approach to them that are filled with that great punk rock spirit.

In Sean’s earlier post he stated that he’s finding it harder and harder to define what kind of music he likes. For me, it seems that I try to be open to different genres, but all I really want at the end of the day is a great rock n’ roll record, and Titus Andronicus pretty much offers all I could ask for with The Monitor.

Favorite Tracks: “A More Perfect Union”, “No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future”, “Theme From “Cheers””

Resentment Album Review

Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record

I’d heard the name Broken Social Scene one or two times before, but the first time I actually heard their music was lying on a hill in George, WA at the Sasquatch Music Festival. So my impression of this band – er collective – might be a little skewed. Actually, my entire opinion is skewed. Because I am me, and only I like all the music that I like. I’d be kidding myself if I thought anything different. Fuck it, why even review this thing? No one cares. No. Pull it together, Sean. Colin, John, Paul and Peter were all there too. One of them might be interested. I can do this. Tell the people about Forgiveness Rock Record.

OK. Let’s see. At this part I should do some comparison to the previous BSS albums… But I haven’t heard them. Shit. Um, YouTube some song. Nah, too lazy. I’ll just look up if they played any old songs when we saw them. Yeah they did! So I guess they sound like that. That’s good. Only six of the 10 songs they played were off the new album. That must mean I can make the generalization that this album is not too much of a stretch for the band. Awesome, I’m getting through this thing. What’s next?

How do I feel about the new album? Well, it’s pretty good. I’ve listened to it a couple times now, although most of those times I was driving. Some of the songs rock, other are gentler and prettier. They use a bunch of instruments and dive through a bunch of genres – no, don’t get into the genre thing again. Why do you always focus on that with music? It’s not like video games don’t jump through a bunch of genres these days. Just tell the people if you think they’d like it or not.

Yes, I think you people would like this record. Specifically, if you liked what we saw at Sasquatch there’s more you would love here, some of which might amaze you. God damn, I feel like Colin might have already reviewed this. Why did I just spell feel “feal”? The fuck’s up with that?

Oh shit, favorite tracks.

Favorite Tracks: “World Sick,” “Texico Bitches” “All to All”

2010: The Year of Swim

Caribou – Swim

What kind of music do you like? This is a question that is growing increasingly difficult for me to answer. Unless I ask iTunes Genius, which tells me all I need to do is listen to “Weekend Wars” and “Rebellion (Lies)” over and over until I don’t like music anymore. Have I used this opening before? Doesn’t matter, I’m going with it. Because when I’m confronted by something as classifiably difficult as Swim by Caribou, an album and band I knew nothing about before my first listen, I have to wonder if the art of assigning genres to music (and movies and video games, for that matter) is ultimately futile.

Swim could be described as a dance album, I guess. There certainly are plenty of pulsing beats and synthesizers. And certainly you would have a hard time singing along with the majority of the album, so wildly gesticulating to the rhythm might be the reasonable next step. And yet a significant motif throughout the album is music building up and tearing away, which could leave our dancers as confused as they are horny. Furthermore this is one of those albums that does a great job flowing from one song into the next, but I don’t imagine dance halls are known for playing 43 minute albums in their entirety.

Maybe you could call it electronic music. Swim does do the minimal, heavily repeated lyrics thing in some songs. And it definitely sounds like the majority of this album came from synthesizers. But calling an album electronic is kind of weird. What does that mean? Computers and synthesizers were used? Isn’t that like most music these days? This is pretty far from Daft Punk, Four Tet and Radiohead.

And then there’s a song like “Kaili.” There is no percussion on the track, I don’t think you’d dance to it. There are lyrics, verses and choruses. You could possibly argue it is a pop track. But it sounds entirely unique and penetrating, the music video for this song would probably scare people. And it’s a bit longer than the average pop song, checking in a little under under 5 minutes.

Whatever you want to call it, Swim is another one of those unique musical experiences that I think you have to look for. It might not be your next ringtone, or a feature on your next playlist, but it is an interesting, profound listen. This Caribou guy knows what he’s doing, as long as you’re willing to listen.

Favorite Tracks: “Odessa,” “Kaili,” “Leave House”

In This Post, iPhone It In

Early adoption is fun. Sure, there are plenty of negatives and risks that come with being an early adopter, chiefly long lines, terrible hours, and generally products at their most expensive. But you get a fancy new gadget before everyone else has one. When it is a big deal to have one. When the future of that product is yet to be written, and the critics haven’t had a chance to destroy your fanboyner. Is it worth spending a night, or possibly longer, camped in front of your favorite store? No, probably not. And yet every time a new Harry Potter, Call of Duty or Apple product comes out, people still line up.

And now I’ve done it three times. Only one time really counts, when I bought my Wii – after spending my birthday camped outside the Redmond Target with my friends. My first time was also for a Nintendo product, the GameBoy Advance SP. I was really excited about a Nintendo handheld finally having a backlit screen, and I got my dad and brothers excited enough to head over to Circuit City before it opened and get in line with like one other person. My experience with the iPhone 4 was similar to the SP, in that I showed up shortly before the AT&T store opened, at around 6:30. The phone came out a week earlier, but Tuesday was the first day AT&T was selling them. I didn’t want to spend the night in line, but I felt it couldn’t hurt to show up and press my luck. It paid off: I missed the first shipment of phones but scooped up a voucher for the second shipment, which was due to come in that day at noon. So after battling falling back asleep for a few hours, I returned and claimed my prize: a 32GB iPhone 4.

And what a prize it is. When the first iPhone came out, I thought it was a neat device, but wasn’t quite sold (very much like the current iPad). Then the iPhone 3G came out, supporting some noteworthy improvements that pushed me over the edge in mid-2008. 2009’s iPhone 3GS never seemed like much of an upgrade, adding only one letter to the device’s name (and a compass app!) – I prefer they add at least two letters when I buy the new versions (ie Advance SP, DS Lite). Well Apple dropped two letters this time, but added a beautiful new screen, sleek design, and terrific camera and significant increases to the processing power of its flagship device.

The design of the iPhone 4 is the first thing that stands out when you see it. Gone are Apple’s trademark smooth curves, replaced with shocking hard lines. The volume bevel is gone, replaced by two circular buttons. Aside from that, the elements of the iPhone remain the same, its just prettier. It looks so sleek that I immediately ordered a new case for it, I don’t think I could live with myself if I damaged it. The downside of the new look is the antenna, that metallic strip running along the side of the phone can lose its signal if you hold it just right. Hopefully this will be fixed down the road and for now I’m fine holding it differently. I think you can argue against many aspects of the iPhone 4, but the one thing I can come up with no defense against is the beauty of its shell: this is simply the prettiest mass-produced handheld device I’ve ever seen. And of course Apple paired these gorgeous aesthetics with some incredible hardware.

The iPhone 4 screen is called the Retina Display, because Apple claims the phone is so dense with pixels the human eye cannot distinguish between them. Basically, they’re saying looking at the Retina Display is comparable to looking at print. In practice, I have a hard time disproving them. I can definitely read small text that would have been significantly less legible on my iPhone 3G. When I hold the phone close to my face, all I accomplish is hurting my eyes. So I’m pretty happy with the screen. The speakers also sound a lot better than the 3G’s, although I hear they’re comparable to the 3GS’s. And behind the scenes is a processor that is close to as powerful as the iPad’s, and twice the RAM of the 3GS. The speed increase is very noticeable coming off the 3G, especially being able to quickly launch apps that would crash my old phone. The battery seems pretty great too, I used my phone for over 12 hours; listening to music via BlueTooth, making calls, wireless N and 3G web browsing and playing games, and only drained the battery to around 60%.

Today, the smart phone has to do a lot more that make calls. Like its predecessors, the iPhone 4 can run a ton of great apps, play music and video and make good calls (as long as AT7T will allow you). But the kiddies need it to be a camera too. And I’m finally willing to admit I wouldn’t begrudge someone who used their iPhone 4 as a camera. Sporting a 5MP lens and flash, the iPhone 4 does a good job shooting even in low-light situations. It can record video in 720p as well, and you can even edit video on your phone, using iMovie. There’s a lesser front-facing lens that you can use to take pictures of yourself, like a scrub, or, much more interestingly, use to make video calls using Face Time. However, Face Time requires two iPhone 4s and a WiFi connection, so I probably won’t ever use it.

Is the iPhone 4 worth it? That depends on you. I’ve just barely gotten the device, but I’ve been very impressed by it. For me, someone who is already locked into the Apple world, this felt like a substantial upgrade that hopefully will keep me satisfied for another two years like my 3G did. For a 3GS user, you’d be mainly getting a better screen and camera, if that’s worth it, then by all means. For those poor souls without an iPhone, this is a pretty good place to jump on in. Your missing out on a whole world of portable fart sound effects.