My Response to Music

Dead Man’s Bones - “Name In Stone”

The Good: Enjoyable enough, nice “hey-let’s-all-gather-‘round” feel

The Meh: Uninspired melody, too long for acoustic song, another song with ironically original doo-wop lyrics

Who would have guessed I’d review two acoustic songs in a row? I really don’t want a reputation as some folk song hipster, so I’m gonna start cutting back on acoustic things. Let’s face it, I’m going to college soon and all I’m going to hear are drum circles, guitar dicks, and, fuckin’, ukulele players. As if I don’t hear enough of that stuff now…

I like folk music, don’t get me wrong. Some of it really speaks to me, and not in a “I’m-reading-too-far-into-it” way. I totally get folk music. Some of it’s really creative and honest and beautiful. But basically I just mean Paul Baribeau. Man, I’d fuck Paul Baribeau. Maybe it’s the beard…

Name In Stone is by a band called Dead Man’s Bones, who’s members, apparently, bonded over Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride. That ride still scares the shit out of me. I wonder why? Is it because my brother forced me on when I was 3, 4 and 5 and half while my parents took pictures, forever branding me with a scarring image of a man being hung? Nah, I must be a pussy. The two members of Dead Man’s Bones shared a love in all things ghostly and spooky and Halloweeny, so they started a folk band. Nice idea, I’ll let it slide. But what’s important is the song. How is the song?

Well it’s mediocre. It starts off with a lovely and seductive melody and a singer who sounds straight out of my favorite Animal House Scene… the one with John Belushi when he hears the guy playing the guitar at the frat party. “I Gaaaaave my love a cherry that had noooo stoooone”… remember that one? Then he takes the guitar and fucking smashes it against the wall until it’s nothing but a neck, hands it back to the guy and says, “Sorry.” Fuck that parts funny. While not exactly what I want to do to the members of this band, it’s kinda close. This song is rather long, coming in at approximately 5 minutes. For a song with just a guitar and vocals, that’s kind of long, even if it’s good. Mostly because it’s hard to keep someone interested that long when you have such a limited toolkit. I’m sure some people can pull it off but not these guys. Especially with that melody. It was so predictable. I hummed along to a song I had never heard before. Isn’t that weird? Don’t ask yourself, because the answer is yes.

This song wasn’t awful, just nothing fascinating. I was sort of looking forward to when it ended so I could start typing about it. If you like these guys and this style, great, if it works for you then totally. I’ve just heard better folk music is all. But give these guys a chance, maybe you won’t find the melody and length an issue. It’s a got a cool party atmosphere to it where everyone’s sorta singing and clapping along, so that’s nice, even though I think even Against Me! did it better. What a bummer now, Against Me! They literally turned into polar opposites from what they started as. Don’t believe me? Listen to “We Did it All For Don” and then listen to “Stop” and tell me I’m wrong.

I rambled a lot in this one. Sorry guys. Listen to the song, maybe you’ll like it.

Overall Score: 2.5/5

Listen to Name in Stone on YouTube

Thanks Natasha!

Preston Reed - “Stonecutter”

The Good: Excellent guitar work, fantastic rhythm, very nice (but not beat-you-over-the-head) western feel

The Trivial: Slightly too long, easy to forget you’re listening to it

I wish I could play guitar. I really do. I don’t want to sound like one of those guys who just picks up guitar for the hell of it or whatever and strings 3 chords and belts out his favorite Dispatch song. I want to learn to play probably because it’s such an important aspect of the music I frequent and I’d love to dive head-first into creating a sound similar to it, but alas, I can’t play. I can play powerchords pretty fine, and I can bar the hell out most punk songs, but I can’t, you know, play.

Sometimes I think though, maybe I’d like to learn another instrument. I’m very interested in bass, maybe I’ll learn that next. Or maybe something unique, like a saxoflute, which I hear is all the rage in Russia now, right alongside the banpiccolojo. But when I hear songs like Preston Reed’s Stonecutter, goddammit, I wanna learn to play guitar again.

What’s so great about this acoustic guitarist’s song is that it takes everything so intriguing and special about country music, and it leaves the bullshit behind. By bullshit I of course mean lyrics about beating wives, a large orchestra (of apparently only violins), and Taylor Swift. God, you know who’s music I hate? Taylor Swift. She seriously needs to shut up. Where was I? Stonecutter.

Not being exactly familiar with many artists in this genre, I could only compare it to a (rather off-beat and not consistent with the others in the album) Baroness song by the name of “Cockroach en Fleur”. Instead of the usual atmospheric, bludgeoning sludge riffs the band is notable for, this track consists of a sole acoustic guitar that sounds very similar in style to Preston Reed’s Stonecutter. While I wasn’t really a fan of Cockroach en Fleur at first, it grew on me, and soon it became one of my favorites on the album.

Stonecutter is one of those songs that you can close your eyes and imagine you’re somewhere else, where this song is playing over your life in that new place. Not surprisingly I feel like I’m in Oregon Trail. I just bout about 100 pounds of fish and my uncle Linus just died of malaria, but god dammit, I’m gonna keep truckin’ along ‘till I reac Oregon. Is that a river? Fuck.

I reccomend this song to anyone who is looking for very relaxing, stylized acoustic music. No vocals, no bullshit. Only complaint I really have is the length, it might be just a tad too long. By this I mean that sometimes Preston is playing the same passage over and over and I kind of forget the music is even playing. Extremely small complaint over. Go check out this song while I pick up the album. See you out on the trail.

Overall Score: 4.5/5

Listen to Stonecutter on Last.fm (No YouTube video could be found)

Thanks Steven!

Blazin’ Squad - “Flip Reverse”

The Good: Um… hm… I uh, don’t really know what to say.

The Please-Castrate-Yourself-To-Prevent-Reproduction: Every. Single. Thing.

I think my friend is fucking with me. He has to be. He’s a very cool dude, I know because I’ve talked with enough to know he’s not planning on inviting me to his house so he could drug me. He’s not one of “those guys”. Given all this, the mind fucking reels when he sends me this knock-out tune by, “Blazin’ Squad, a British hip hop group”, he said. It’s sort of funny, when you hear “British” and “hip-hop” together. It’s like hearing “Norwegian” and “astronaut”; it’s not really two words you would associate with together. But that would make for a pretty kick-ass Saturday Morning Kidz Cartoon, wouldn’t it?

I started the song like I do with the few before it, with low expectations. But, as I soon came to find out, even the lowest of expectations could not prepare me for the almighty fury of Blazin’ Squad.

I must have missed out on something in pop culture. I just must have missed out on something that was cool. I mean, these guys seem like the life of the party, and this song looks like its getting all the girls to dance, but if you actually listen to it, it’s the same melody used in 62 other songs and the same beat used in 2,204 other songs. And these guys, holy shit, these guys are white as ghosts. I know I’m not the coolest kid. I’m inappropriate, make weird faces, listen to music deemed unacceptable by the lord Jesus Christ, and I occasionally wear the same pair of socks as I did the day before. What in holy hell are these cracker’s secrets? Fuckin’ England man…

What is a flip reverse? The lines leading up to its mention is “Girl, I love the way you work it”. Seems like a pretty standard line for a white guy trying to get laid. “And if you let me, I wanna flip reverse it”. What the fuck? Where did flip reverse it come from? In an attempt to understand this new and exotic culture (which I will henceforth dub as “You ‘kay?”), I googled searched “flip reverse”. I was led to an Urban Dictionary page. This is the definition it gave me, verbatim:

“British slang.When a person is having vaginal intercourse and then flips the female over to have anal intercourse.”
Now I don’t know what you first thought when you read it, but oddly enough my first thought was, “Why do you need the word reverse?” Don’t you think the word flip would suffice? If you’re talking about girls and you say “Then I flipped her”, I’m not going to think “Oh he must be a trapeze artist”. I’m gonna put 2 and 2 together (or in this case, what makes number 1 together with what makes number 2) and realize what you meant. In this case, reverse implies you start with the ass and move onto the vagina. In which case, I’ve got nothin’ to say to you.
This is trash at its finest. I now have a new low standard in music. By the way Blazin’ Squad, I have a fantastic idea for your next band member. You should look him up, as I’m sure he’s not doing anything important since the disbandment of his commercially successful rap-metal group:

Overall Score: .5/5
Watch “Flip Reverse” on YouTube

Thanks Jonathan!

Grizzly Bear - “Southern Point”

The Good: Nice bluesy-style guitar, several really pleasant passages

The Typical: Annoying breathy voice, drummer sounds like he’s trying to kill a fly, is that a sax or a didgeridoo

I hate to say it, because as a highly-rated six-figure income music critic it is very unprofessional, but I went into this review with some less than positive feelings. I remember checking out Grizzly Bear once before after their addition to the Coachella lineup for this year, and, honestly, I was bummed out. “How could a band with the name Grizzly Bear make such generic sounding tunes? I thought they would be a crazy noise-rock-grunge-funk ensemble, but I can see now I am surely mistaken”, I said to my cat, who proceeded to poke holes in my pillows and leave. I don’t remember which song it was, and no, I’m not going to look for it. You just like seeing me in pain don’t you? Well fie on you.

I have a friend who is a big fan of Grizzly Bear. I know because she wears a Grizzly Bear shirt every so often, and for some reason no one really wears band shirts at my school. Maybe it’s too ironic or some reason that, you know, makes no sense. I for one wear a band shirt every day. It’s my way of giving back to the place that has shaped my musical influence. I’m rambling.

She heard of my blog and lit up like priest in a nursery. She quickly and frantically began scrolling through her iTunes searching for the perfect song to impress me. “You’ll probably hate it anyways”, she told me. Girl has grown to level 16. Girl has learned Foresight. She proceeded to send me two songs by Grizzle Bar. “I don’t do that”, I told her. “What?” “I said I don’t review two songs, especially by the same band, I only do one song per band, at least until I don’t give a shit about my continuity”. She told me to listen to “Southern Point”. So I did, right in front of her. Yeah, I’m totally punk-rock, in your face, off the wall, avant-garde, experimental-performance-art-I’m gonna stop.

Much to my surprise, the song started really well. The sound was bluesy, helped by two dueling acoustic guitar rifts. “I was totally wrong about this band” I thought until about 0:22. A young man, singing ever so softly into the mic, as if he was embarrassed of his own voice and was trying not to beard. “Well fuck” I said aloud. The librarian must have heard me cause she gave me that look. You know, the look that says “You’re a rebel… without breaking the law. That gets me excited.”. Or maybe it was that other look…

The singer is trying to seduce me at this point. I feel sexually harassed as he whispers his melodies to me, running his stubby fingers through my hair, god, I feel so violated. Then something happens. The beat drops, and what a fuckin’ beat it is. Perhaps someone forgot to inform the drummer they were recording and there was a fly buzzing around the room. With every bit of his strength he was trying to kill that fly, completely ignoring the sounds he made. It was like a war zone, I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. For the next 2-3 minutes I was uneasy but attentive. I didn’t really enjoy much of it until around 3:41, where the song sounds like it, well, switched to another song. A prettier song. But I can never have my way, and it was over before it even started, lasting an astonishing 20 seconds. Cue the seducing voice, cue the weird piano sounding guitar, cue the saxophone that has no business being in the song, fuck it, cue everything.

Do I recommend this song? Give it a shot. Then tell it that the shot was malaria. Watch it cry and think, “Man, I’m glad I’m not that song”. That’s sort of how I feel; I’m glad I’m not that song. Not to say it’s bad, it’s just not for me. I can’t pull it off. I’m glad I’m not that song.

Overall Score: 3/5

Listen to “Southern Point” on Youtube

Thanks Emilie!

Hot Chip - Over and Over

The Good-ish: The beat.

The Bummer: The lyrics, the music video, I see a guitar but I do not hear a guitar, uninspired melody

Comments: I find myself enjoying most house music. It’s got a good beat, it’s fun to dance to, it does what it does very well. There a lot of different sub-genres of house music. You’ve got electro, fidget (which must be French for “off-beat”), tech, etc. When my friend sent me “Over and Over” by Hot Chip, a band I had never heard before, I did what I always do when a friend sends me music: I rate it one star. I find that if I go in with low expectations, I often have a less than terrible time. The song starts off with, what I thought, was a house beat. “Sweet” I thought, “I didn’t know my friend was into house music”. Then the pulsating bass entered, emphasizing certain notes over others. The melody was different than I expected, it kind of caught me off guard, like a girl who talks to me at parties. But, like the parties, I was kind of digging it. My head sort of bobbin’ to the beat at this point. The end of the 4-bar was approaching, so I cocked my head back in anticipation of the drop. But there was no drop. There wasn’t even a fumble. Instead, some guy’s voice found its way into the beat. “Laid back” the man said. This man did not sound like he had something important to say, but my head kept movin’, thinking maybe it was just a sample from some obscure 80’s cult sci-fi movie, and that it won’t come back. I was wrong.

I won’t bore you with the details, but by the middle of this song, I had carved “God is dead” into my wall with a pair of tweezers and I was about to stab myself to try and distract me from the nagging voice in my ears. The voice was screaming at me: “Turn it off! Turn that shit off! You’re gonna die you fucking idiot!” Maybe the voice had a point. I was 2 seconds from pressing pause when I realized that if I don’t listen to the entire song, how will the readers take me seriously? Then I remembered that the only authority I have is in deciding what my parents will make for dinner (or I throw a temper tantrum). I turned it off, and all of a sudden, wouldn’t you know, some birds started to sing.

I want to touch briefly on the music video for this song, as it was sent to me as a YouTube link. I don’t know why everyone in the band was jumping around so much, but for lack of a better word, it looked retarded. Maybe it was a special band? Maybe no one wanted to ruin their fun and they got them a record deal because their parents support them in everything they do. Plus, two of the members are fat and ugly. The singer was obviously bald, otherwise why would he be wearing a hood over his head during a god damn music video:

I’m sorry you’re bald but at least have some self-confidence. Actually, know what, I’m not sorry. It’s obvious that god has punished you for making his brain hurt.

Overall Score: 1.5/5

Listen to “Over and Over” on Youtube

Thanks Ally!

RJD2 - Games You Can Win feat. Kenna

The Cool: The sound , the presence

The Confusing: What genre… is it?, That black guy sounds mayo-white.

Comments: When I first pressed play on Games You Can Win, I was immediately transported back in time to Christmas Eve when I was seven years old. I remember going to the mall with my mommy, and waiting in line to sit on jolly ‘ol Saint Nick’s lap. I was going to tell him all the things I wanted for Christmas, and all the wishes I have for the world. I knew, even back then, that telling Santa you want world peace would totally make him think I was cool. “He wants World Peace!” Santa would say to the helper elves, who were no doubt drunk midgets in their 40s. “He’s going to grow up to have a huge cock!” At least, that’s I’m guessing he said, after all, Santa can predict the future pretty well. I told Santa I wanted a bike, the fastest bike in the world. I was convinced I would be flying down the street in a shiny new bike by the next morning.

When I awoke the next morning, at 4:30 AM, I rushed down the steps to the tree. My mouth was agape, staring at all the presents under the tree. I decided I could open one, just one present, to tie me over until my parents woke up. I found an innocent little box, tucked away in the corner, as if it was trying to hide from me. I ripped off the wrapping paper and cracked open the cardboard box and found, well, another box. A box with a dial, and pictures of rainbows and happy children. It said “My music box” in giant red font. I was intrigued. Surely my parents couldn’t have given me this. This doesn’t look fun. It doesn’t have pictures of naked women on it. It couldn’t be for me. I slowly turned the dial on the box, hoping perhaps my own real live pokemon would come shooting out, but instead, I heard a song. A series of bell like tones. I realized my parents we’re fucking with me. I ran upstairs and punched my dad in the nuts. The bells I heard that morning sound an awful lot like the beginning of this song by RJD2.

Now, by no means is this song bad. In fact, it was quite enjoyable. It seemed to combine elements of hip hop, dub-step, and, as some musical historians would say, “melody”. The vibrating, reoccurring oscillator throughout the song adds a spacey feel to an otherwise not-so-spacey song. The vocals were clear and not obnoxious, which is important, especially after listening to so many people sing the Canadian nation anthem in the past few weeks. I swear to god if one more person takes creative liberty with an already respectable anthem, I’m going to bomb their house with a 30 megaton moose.

This is a good song. It’s not in your face, it’s not too too subtle. The melody is catchy and it’s all done in a respectable way. I recommend it, especially to those who love Christmas.

Overall score: 4/5

Thank you Jonah!

Welcome.

Welcome to My Response to Music. In this blog, I plan on taking songs people suggest me and posting my response to them. I will do so in the following template:

Just to clarify, I’m not a professional. My opinion doesn’t matter, and if you use it to actually judge music then you need to be checked. You’re also totally overweight.

[Song - Artist]

The ____ (good, awesome, weird):
The ____ (bad, insulting, fuck):

Comments:

Overall Score: __/5

If you want to send me a song, email me at johnbosson@mac.com