Weather Friendly Music Shifter

Matching your favorite music to the weather outside is one of the more rewarding pursuits of a music junkie. It takes a lot of skill to say: "Today <sigh> is a Radiohead day" or "The weather is just telling me to listen to the Beatles." To pefectly match up a band to a particular day is extremely satisfying. It's as if you picked the soundtrack of your life for that day. However, I don't have such a divine connection to the weather and trying to match bands takes a certain amount of effort. Whenever it's cloudy, overcast, or rainy my default band is Radiohead, and Radiohead, I've found, is like heroin. Why Ben, you say, when have you ever taken heroin? To that I reply, never. I just know that whenever I listen to Radiohead for large amounts of time, there comes a point when I need Radiohead to continue, almost as if my body says to me, "No. Must have Radiohead. Shutting Down." Then when I listen to Radiohead, I get really happy.  If those aren't the symptoms of some kind of drug, I don't know what is. I need a new rainy day band. Arcade Fire maybe? They do sound "wet" but I don't know how you classify a Canadian indie rock band as "wet" '
Perhaps The Beatles? Maybe some atmospheric DJ Shadow? I think I'll try DJ shadow. Wait maybe Godspeed You! Black Emperor? Do you see what I mean? It's almost impossible to do this and now my whole day will be precoupied. Geez.
Adios guys

  

Suck It And See

Suck It And See. Give It A Try. So that's what I did. After hearing the mixed results that this new album gathered from friends and critics alike I decided to listen to this album with an open mind. So maybe this wasn't their greatest stuff. So what? It's still the Arctic Monkeys and that's saying a lot. 

Alex Turner does have a lot to say on this album, much more so than the sexy/creepy workout of Humbug, in which many of his lyrics played second fiddle to the instrumentation and overall mood of the album. Suck It And See is all about the wordplay. "I'm out of place and I'm not getting any wiser. Like the Sundance Kid behind a synthesizer," he croons, accompanied by spacious guitar on "Black Treacle." The lyrics to many of the songs on this album are memorable and a little undecipherable, like on "The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala": "I took the batteries out of my mysticism and put them in my thinking cap." Who really knows what that means but it's probably about deciphering the mysterious woman or the "hellcat." 

Speaking of which, many of the songs on this album have to do with  mesmerizing women and the finicky nature of love, but they deal with them in a normal (somewhat) way then the innate creepiness of Humbug (like "Crying Lightning" example).  However, Humbug has left its mark. Many of the songs main guitar parts drop out leaving the drums and bass to pound away in sync which is a trick they probably picked up from Josh Homme (I believe "Dangerous Animals" on Humbug is the first occurrence of this) and many of the faster and more opaque songs feature spiky, needle-sharp guitar solos not found on their pre-Humbug work. There are three main songs on the album that don't have the depth of song arrangement or substantiated wordplay of the rest of the album and, coincidentally, sound the most like Queens of The Stone Age (with the exception of maybe "All My Own Stunts"). These are "Don't Sit Down Cause I've Moved Your Chair," "Brick By Brick," and "Library Pictures." These three songs don't grab you by your throat as many Arctic Monkeys' songs have in the past and seem just like simply, yet catchy, jams. They offset the ballads in the rest of the album perfectly and the album seems incomplete without them. If the songs were taken out of the album, it would appear that the Monkeys would have forgotten how to rock because these three songs blister with heavy guitar and spiky solos. 

Overall all this album seems more of a reboot because the A.M's are taking in what they learned from Humbug out in the desert and applying it to the pop-savvy rockers of Whatever People Say. . .  and the effect is to show a band that can croon and can also rock and a band that can dissect a failed relationship with a view pointed phrases or just sit back and let the riff speak for itself. 

Dog Days of Summer

I guess the dog days of summer came early this year. What a hot ant thick Monday. Yuck. I'm just glad that this isn't the school year because today could have been the Monday to end all Mondays. But it wasn't, and I am glad. I just swung by the library and grabbed a couple of records. I got Daydream Nation and Goo by Sonic Youth, Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will by Mogwai, and Evil Urges by My Morning Jacket. Daydream Nation was surprisingly good. For me, Sonic Youth had this air of indecipherable, avant-garde noise rockers that played their guitars with bits of trash and called it "art." But I was wrong. Daydream Nation's rocked with guitar textures that were deep and vaired. Songs shimmered and glowed and only descended into noisy skronks very few times. It was a compelling listen. Hope to get a more thorough review sometime later.
I'm halfway through Evil Urges and it's just awesome. Somehow, My Morning Jacket avoids making any kind of cookie-cutter music. You can't pigeon hole it. They bounce around from country, to soul, to rock. Jim James and his boys are all over the map. I love it. For some stupid reason, I avoided them in the past because I didn't know exactly what kind of music they were. Now I know.
Have to get back to you on Mogwai. I'm not sure.
Here are some links
Cheers

And

Sound of Silver

I'm still getting used to this whole blog post album reveiw thing. My last reveiw I jotted of kinda of quickly and it wasn't what I wanted so I think I'm going to start with an album I really know. And that is Sound of Silver. LCD Soundsystem is one of my favorite bands. They call themselves a "dance-punk" band but I want to avoid such pigeon hole labels and say they just make insanely catchy music with lots of irony, pathos, and humor. Sound of Silver builds upon many of the strengths of their debut album and the result is a dance album with an incredible amount of depth. The wit and irony are still here with "Time To Get Away" and "Watch The Tapes" which are songs that characteristicly berate certain closeminded hipsters and fakes. The real triumpth, though, is 3 of the most heartful songs LCD Soundsystem has produced this year: "Someone Greate," "All My Friends," and "New York I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down." "Someone Great" is a beautiful lament on losing the love of your life and having to deal with the changes (or lack there of). James Murphy keeps things deliberately vague so you're never quite sure of how the main person in the song lost their loved one or whether it was a girlfriend or a wife. All that's revealed is that the there was a loss and that loss is dealt with humor and sadness. The main character expects that the world would change in responese to his loss. He expects that the whole world would greive with him but instead: "The worst is all the lovely weather / I'm sad, its not raining / The coffee isn't even bitter, because what's the difference?" With all loss one eventually "get's over it" but who knows how long that can take?: "And it keeps coming, till the day it stops." This song is a techno/electronic song but it would never be played in a club. Unless the club was just about to close on an unusally slow night and all the jaded people were gathered at the bar. "All My Friends" is another pathos song in which the main character deals with getting old, another big theme. This one is my personal favorite because it's the first song by this band that I heard. It starts with an undulating keyboard line that serves as the songs intro, bridge, and triumphant refrain. Many of the songs lyrics deal with fatigue, loneliness and the end of things: "It comes apart / the way it does in bad films, / except the part, where the moral kicks in," or " And to tell the truth / Oh, this could be the last time. So here we go, like a sail's force into the night." If only the main character could "see all [his] friends" then things would be better. The album's closer "New York. . ." is a fitting close to the album. The song starts as a piano lament on how James Murphy's beloved New York has cleaned up her act. She's "safer and she's wasting [his] time" "The boring collect" and he "means all disrespect." But in the end New York is "perfect, oh don't change a thing." Other songs on the album are just as heartfelt. There's the gangland demarcation stomp of "Us v Them",  Murphy's good-humored observations on the tirade of Anti-Americansim in "North American Scum" and the most techno like song on the album, with its repeated chant-like refrain, "Sound of Silver." With many repeated listens this album sheds its humor and irony and reveals the pathos of human experience that underlies many of the songs on this album. Also, the album just sounds so damn good. The drums are crisp and puncy and the bass thick. Overall, this isjust a really great album. 

Writer's Block by Peter Bjorn and John

Peter Bjorn and John make really good pop music. By "pop" I mean really solid 3-4 minute songs with a catchy chorus. Not mind melting-dupstep laced top 40 songs.  The true genius of Peter Bjorn and John is the variability. They throw so many different elements into one hat and mix it all around. There's hints of shoegaze guitar on "Objects of My Affection", harpsichords on "Sunday Morning", and a whistling line on "Young Folks." Odds are you've already heard the ridicously catchy earwhorm whistling hook I'm referring to on "Young Folks" and the rest of the album is just the same as far as catchiness. Peter Bjorn and John know how to write catchy songs. They also know how to write songs about love, and that is what keeps me coming to them. The harspichord is perfect on "Sunday Morning" which tells the tale of what lovers do the night after. The shoegaze guitar proclaims proudly the singer's resolution on "Objects of My Affection" of: "I'm gonna give you a chance". Each song functions as a short story about love and its problems and all of them add up to make a very satisfying listen.

First Blog Post Ever---Ta Da!

Hey Everyone,
This is the official launch of John Milton Is a Sadist! blog which will be  full of musical musings, arful aphorism, and confusing conundrums. It's also a way to keep us from dying of boredom during this sweltering summer. Everyday we hope to give you some music reviews, updates on the music world, and other random things to keep you interested. It's going to be fun.
Pugnaciously Yours,
The Cabal