London Calling

Something about the sound of CDs collided a bunch of years back with the newer waves of very noisy rock, so that every rock song produced in the US seems to basically be this percussive racket. You put on a popular CD and it will sound like shit, and the band won’t be any better if you see them on TV. Even the mighty Crimson would every now and then turn into percussion, particularly in those mid-sized halls which act like giant bandpass filters, dicing and slicing pure musical tones.

What I should have seen coming is that, eventually, people would start to remember that long ago and far away, music actually had some music in it, as opposed to racket and percussive sounds. Melody is nice, but I’ll even take dissonance as long as its musical.

But Fleet Foxes is, without a doubt, both music as well as musical. And it sounds really odd right now: No so subtle hints of Appalachian vocal music, Beach Boys, even Anonmymous 4, but still with some guitars and even some rockin’ sounds every now and then. But oddly, it also doesn’t sound ‘retro’, or like it’s trying to imitate or amalgamate styles gone by. Rather, it incorporates these old forsaken styles in order to make some actual MUSIC.

This is the kind of record which, if I lived downstairs from Eno, I’d bang on his door and play for him with full confidence that he’d say, “Oh now that is different. That is very interesting.”

And of course, there’s the new Sigur Ros disc, which is also very musical. That first track Gobbledeegook is excellent, with echos of Steve Reich while retaining it’s essence. It’s unique and just slightly rockin’ and one of those tracks that you really want to hear again and again.

I also got Walter Becker’s Circus Money today too, but I am not particularly impressed with it. Maybe it will grow on me. Of course, the lyrics at times border on the phenomenal, but the record as a whole is pretty low energy, with many Jamaican and ska-ish rythms. (On the other hand, Becker’s last 11 tracks of Whack from around 93 remains on my top 100 list, so I will give this one a few more tries.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.