The Man Behind the Flow Curtain

The best thing I can say about this track from the new Britney Spears album is anecdotal: I was in a record store, heard it, and thought it was the new Prince.

Britney Spears "Why Should I Be Sad" [From Blackout]

I wasn't surprised to find later that it was produced by Pharrell Williams:



Pharrell's work is pure poetry – excuse me, flow-etry. For further proof, try anything off Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury, which he co-produced as well:

Clipse "Hello New World" [From Hell Hath No Fury]

Tell Me You Love Me

Last Sunday was the season finale of the new HBO series Tell Me You Love Me and it was a brilliant end to a solid ten-episode run. I have to admit, I was seriously hooked on this show, and it surprises me a little. On the surface, it has all the things I hate about dramatic television: mopey vignettes about pretty people with too much time and money on their hands, completely overwhelmed with unfulfillment and suburban woe – the Sophia Copolla effect. But Tell Me You Love Me is not a pouty show, and beneath its slick surface it has all the things I love about dramatic television, specifically the space that serialized storytelling has to really develop a character - or tell a story - which a two-hour movie does not. And this show has a sharp focus, a small-scale thesis about intimacy by a team of creators that really took the time to think its characters through. Executive producer Cynthia Mort, who developed the project, has genuine insight about relationships and Tell Me You Love Me's scripts are full of believable moments rather than flashy, pithy one-liners designed to sound like new urban wisdom, but which then don't really ring true.

Tell Me You Love Me worked up a lather of sweaty buzz about its graphic sexual content, which includes generous helpings of testicles, breasts, butts, penises, vaginas and barnyard animal sounds. But honestly the show needed that suggestion of color to offset its very low-key tone and the stricly un-sensational and narrowly-defined scope of the little story it wants to tell. It follows four couples of varying ages and status as they work through unique intimacy issues: Jamie and Hugo are young and rash, they screw a lot, and they struggle with jealousy and commitment. Carolyn and Palek are in their thirties, moderately successful and are trying with no luck to conceive their first child. They screw a lot too, but eventually all the attempted baby making begins to take its toll. Dave and Katie are the most traditional couple (for example, they don't swear). They've been married forever, are in their fourties with two kids, and don't ever screw anymore. As it turns out, there is some really deep-seated stuff that turned off the sex faucet in their bedroom. And finally there's May and Arthur. They're pushing 70 and they screw a lot too (I hate to say it, but you might be at least a little horrified at those scenes. Nothing can prepare you for the shock of seeing a senior citizen giving head.). May's a therapist and at one point or another, all of the other couples eventually make it into her office. That is presumably what unites the four storylines, although all of the relationships are meant to symbolize a single relationship at different stages of development, with May and Arthur representing the finished product – the couple that made it by sticking out everything from infidelity to "bed dread," and are now reaping the rewards of all that struggle and persistence. It's a pretty ingenious concept and it totally works.

The show is pro fidelity and pro self-truth. It wants its troubled couples to face their problems and work through them, rather than seek solace in distraction or repression. As Mort points out, beneath all that soft core porn is really a fairly conservative sensibility. It reminds me of Stanley Kubrik's Eyes Wide Shut, which was a very old-fashioned meditation on fidelity that was unfairly eclipsed by the rating scandal about its macabre orgy scene.

To me, cable television has become the new best place for narrative form. And of its endless channels, HBO is still setting the standard. They have the cash and, by now, a creative mandate to greenlight quality; and when you combine that with good taste in projects and talent, as HBO does, genius ensues. Personally, I prefer at least an attempt at realism in my novels, movies and television shows – whether drama or comedy; it just heightens the effect. So I was never a fan of HBO staples like Six Feet Under or Deadwood, which seemed art-directed to within an inch of their lives and didn't crystallize into believability. But I thought The Sopranos was as good as the hype and The Wire is probably the most relevant and consistently affecting work of art in the last 10 years. And then there's Entourage, Extras and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which aren't "serious" shows but are as smart as they are feel-good. So I guess I qualify as an HBO fan of some sort.

I think Tell Me You Love Me already ranks with any of those shows in quality. Right out of the gate, it knew what it wanted to be and it went about it flawlessly. The casting is perfect, you can't imagine anybody else playing these characters, and all the couples have believable chemistry and the actors plenty of depth. It's probably not for everybody - most people watch TV to give their brains a rest and, like The Wire, this is the kind of show that you have to engage with for it to work. But you can tell that the creators really love the characters and I can't think of another show that actually seems to want to benefit its viewers rather than just entertain them. Even The Wire, which is so full of social concern, is more nihilistic about its complaints than proactive.

I don't really have anything to link to. I think the DVDs come out in January. However, if you are able to catch the reruns on HBO, make sure to watch the promotional podcasts they created where they ask real couples to watch the series and talk about it. In their own way, they're just as entertaining as the actual show. [Those promos are also available as a free download in iTunes.]

Sean Madigan Hoen – "We Two Are"

Sean Hoen's presence has loomed large in Southeast Michigan for years. By the time I met him and became acquainted with his bands The Holy Fire and Leaving Rouge, he was already a slightly cleaned-up version of his former bloodshot-eyed, manic persona. Before I moved back to Detroit, Sean had already made his mark fronting the hardcore band Thoughts of Ionesco and was a minor legend for his apeshit antics. It's like this: everybody who came up indie in the '90s has a David Yow (Jesus Lizard) story, and if you came up in Detroit, you have a Sean Hoen story too. In his own words, people didn't go to his shows to hear the music, they went to see Sean lose his shit.

But that kind of self-destructive theater has its limits. And given the choice between keeping up a faked version of the catharsis or moving on to less abrasive forms of expression, Sean chose the latter while keeping it just as articulate and lucid. It's interesting to watch an artist like that not losing the edge, but sublimating it. Like a volcano that teaches itself more subtle forms of eruption. It puts Sean in the great company of ex-hardcore band leaders like Henry Rollins and Ian MacKeye, who I think of as human tuning forks that maintain their tremulous appearance through even the most presentable of aesthetic haircuts.

I love the sound of Sean's voice. It seems like two octaves at once. It has the reedy bite of a tenor, but somehow still seems baritone deep. Maybe it's that whole devils vs. angels thing in his rock'n'roll-as-demonology lyrics. Two versions of the same person – one higher, one lower – meeting in a voice. "We Two Are" is my favorite moment on The Liquor Witch, his first solo album, and has all the requisite qualities of a Sean Hoen song as well as a great title that frames moral schizophrenia in a three-word Zen kohn. It takes its time getting to beautiful places but gradually inflates with reverb, like a giant hot air balloon, before Sean punctures everything with a spectacularly ugly moan.

Sean Madigan Hoen - "We Two Are" [From The Liquor Witch]

Sean on MySpace

Mobius Band - I Am Always Waiting

I can't figure out the difference between
Your love and your company

After about the fourth or fifth listen, this song revealed its myriad mysteries to me. It's a grower, but as the hooks sink in, so do the details. Like those diving seagull sounds that dart in and out of the chorus explosion. And the fuzzed-out kazoo sound Ben Sterling gets out of his guitar during the denouement seems more appropriate every pass. For pop music, the arrangement finds ways to sneak in pockets of invention, but subtly - it still feels like an unadorned serving of catchy.

I love the tone, and the modest way Sterling sings. I love the contrast of his light drawl with the urbanity of Mobius Band's droid-aided rock. Emotionally, it's breakup-song big, the kind of cut you want to listen to when your life feels like plates of massive, tectonic shift. But even in breakups, the tearing is sometimes balanced with adrenaline, and "I Am Always Waiting" strikes that kind of balance.

Mobius Band "I Am Always Waiting" [From Heaven]

Bob Marley & The Wailers "Trouble Dub"

All reggae recordings should sound this way: like a bootleg of a Bob Marley & The Wailers rehearsal if the Wailers practiced in a bomb shelter. And Marley should have made more animal sounds. Three quarters of the way into the track, mere singing fails him – fails to express his troubles in fullness – and he resorts to soul-screeched cat calls and sharp grunts.


Bob Marley & The Wailers - "Trouble Dub" [From Satisfy My Soul]

Drinking with Cass McCombs

What did Cass McCombs just say? You've been drinking with the man for the better part of an hour (he came with the friend of a friend) and the conversation's been strictly on the lighter side – you just moved back to Detroit, he just moved to Chicago; you just quit your job, he just signed to Domino Records. That kind of thing. And though, with all the noise, it's hard to hear anything clearly in this bar, you're pretty sure he just said, "Stick a needle in my eye. I'm middle class 'till the day I die."

"I'm sorry," you say, "it sounded like you said–" He starts to get up.

"Be right back," he mumbles. "I'm going to put something on the jukebox." He says it so casually. Actually, Cass McCombs says everything casually. You've only just met, but already this guy has to be one of the most laid-back people you've ever come across. He moves and speaks without urgency, confidently but lazily. Yet, there's an intellectual aggressiveness behind his sleepy manner, like an intensity he's keeping in check. And now you're pretty sure he just spoke to you in couplet.

Cass is walking back from the jukebox and over the speakers you hear what could be the new Midlake – warm-bottomed, tissue-soft indie rock. The vocals are tissue-soft, too, but with added aloe. Swells of rich harmonies come and go. The singer's got a good tenor, without drama.

"This is nice," you say as he slides back into his seat. "What is it?"

"My new album," he replies, cleaning his teeth with a car key. "Dropping the Writ."

"But I thought–" He cuts you off shaking his head.

"I know. It hasn't come out yet. But old playthings are all laid to waste. Thrown out to make a better space," he says by way of explanation, then notices you blinking your eyes and adds, "Well, you know what I mean."

"Cass, I don't think I–" you start, but before you can continue your waitress has arrived and is taking a new round of orders. Cass's eyes are half closed as he scans the menu absentmindedly. His record is still playing in the background and has gotten softer. Cass is singing The world is so vain and uncertain/A death in the family and I'm in love again over dark fairytale folk. "I'll have the porter," he decides and then, as if remembering something, takes you by the writst. "Do you ever get the feeling," he asks, eyes wider, "that you're being followed by a van? Yesterdays yet to come?"

"Dude," you say, "how much have you had to drink?"

He thinks about it for a second. "Not much. But, you know, as one memory eludes me another consumes me." You look around the table. Nobody – not your friends, not the waitress – seems to have noticed the strange things coming out of Cass McComb's mouth tonight and you start to wonder if it's you who needs to slow down, maybe order a soda. Cass is staring at you.

"Nothing is impossible," he says, smiling. "A double negative is a positive, is it not?"

Near squirming, you try to change the subject. Try to get the conversation back onto a superficial course. "Hey Cass," you say, "you were telling me about your new apartment in Chicago."

"Yeah," he says, fond distance in his eyes. "I miss my old place in California though. In my small room without a window I was grateful enough just to be alone." You nod, pretending to understand, pretending things have gone back to normal. Cass is listening to his record now. It's rocking again, a low-rolling echo of full-band thunder over which Cass sings lyrics that are nothing less than his life story, beginning with his freaking birth. "This one's called Lionkiller," he says. "I think I'm going to start the album with it."

"That sounds like a good idea. I was just going to–" But Cass is on his feet.

"Excuse me," he says. "But I should go. I don't know what's come over me – the full moon or infinity." Then before you can react he slips a bar napkin into your hand and he's gone. You look around, embarrassed, sure everybody's watching. But nobody's watching. You open the napkin and see some messy chicken scratch. You make out the words Buzz across the universe to the mind's hive. Beyond a shadow of a doubt you're lucky to be alive. It's beautiful and you are, in fact, buzzed so you just lean back and stop fighting it. Cass is still whispering lullabies over the loud speakers and you close your eyes, listening as a harmonica drifts in and out and Cass sings something about ex-lovers and pregnant pauses.

Cass McCombs - Petrified Forest [From Dropping the Writ - Domino Records]

Cass McCombs - Petrified Forest [From Dropping the Writ - Domino Records]

Joan As Policewoman "The Ride"

This song is more Sade than Sade. I refuse to say more.

Joan As Policewoman - "The Ride" [From Real Life]

Fujiya & Miyagi @ The Pike Room Oct. 4

Reviewed Fujiya & Miyagi's show at the Pike Room last night for Detour-Mag.com.

It’s called motorik. When the beat is driving and buyuoant; when the soft-focus synths cruise out from the horizon straight at you like an Autobahn breeze through your windswept hair; when the pulse is so steady it fills you with equal parts wander and lust, it’s called motorik. And last night, Fujiya & Miyagi brought plenty of motorik to one of the intimate music rooms inside a new suburban Detroit club called the Crofoot.

Read the rest of the review.

Exodus to Pontiac (for Detroiters)

Salvation may have arrived for live Detroit music, only we'll have to go to Pontiac to get it. Without naming names, let's just say I've been burned out on downtown Detroit venues for a while. Mostly because of the simple fact that they sound bad. (They smell like vomit too, but a little scent of bile never hurt anybody.) Sure, if you go higher-tier, like St. Andrews and The State Theater you're more likely to get a better mixed show, but step below that and you're in for some real midrange abuse. Like cat screeches and baby wails recorded by a $5 Radioshack special and magnified at weapons-grade levels straight into your eardrum kind of abuse.

I don't have anything against the D. I grew up 313 and, while I can't exactly say "the city's been good to me," I can say that it has its charms and I want the best for it. But the little bit of out-of-state touring I've done in bands only showed me that it doesn't have to be this way – that the United States indie rock trail is littered with plenty of establishments that take pride in what they're doing enough to offer bands the chance to communicate their musical ideas legibly in a relatively filth-free setting. There are places like the Doug Fir Lounge in Portland, OR and Rubbergloves in Denton, TX that not only sound phenomenal but have style and self-respect to match. To my crew, who cut their teeth playing Detroit's hardest dive bars, these places seemed like something out of a commercial for toilet paper and coming home to reality was a drag. Detroit has needed a competing venue on that circuit for years.

I've never felt that independent music belonged sandwiched in bars. Not exclusively. I guess if the music is designed to be listened to while drunk then, by all means, stick with the blown speakers, passive aggressive soundmen and park-at-your-own-risk location – and we'll all work ourselves up into a state of intoxicated agitation. But so much of the rest of music is a statement of some kind – art of some kind, actually – and at least deserves a decent frame to be considered in. Yeah, serve booze, but let it be secondary. We need music venues that happen to serve alcohol, as much as we need alcohol venues that happen to serve music.

I think I found one. I covered the Fujiya & Miyagi show for Detour last night and hiked it out to Pontiac, to a new venue called the Crofoot. (I say "hiked it," but it took me about the same amount of time it would take me to get to, say, The Majestic.) The Crofoot is a three-in-one musical complex in the vein of New York's Bowery Ballroom or The Knitting Factory, with rooms ranging in size from intimate (Pike Room) to cavernous (Eagle Theater). The place was crisp. It smelled like new (not a tinge of vomit, but give them time); all freshly cut wood paneling and shit. But more importantly, the sound was SOUND. I could have used a little more bottom end, but in general all the details were in the right place. I could tell who was playing what. I could hear vocals. I didn't even need a catch rag to dab a bleeding ear.

Fujiya & Miyagi were great, too. I've been discovering the really good Krautrock like Neu! and Cluster this year so I was definitely prepared to appreciate it. I had never heard them before and because the sound was clear, I got to experience them the way they intended to be experienced. When I got the album later, it sounded just like the set I had just seen. [Bonus: I had no problem finding a parking spot on the same street (there are lots for cheap all over the place anyway) and I wasn't confronted by aggressive strangers asking for my money with their faces inches from mine.]

This isn't an anti-Detroit rant, anti-street person, or anti-anything. It's pro music. I like live music and it's good to know there's a decent place to see it again.

Tangerine Dream - Phaedra

Short review of Tangerine Dream's Phaedra up at Detour-Mag.com. Make sure to listen to the mp3. It's essential.

When Edgar Froese first created Tangerine Dream in 1967, the seeds of deconstruction that would dissolve the band’s initial acid rock strains had already been sewn. Well, in Froese’s mind, at least. He had always imagined the group as a canvas for the Dadaist notions he’d developed while studying under Salvador Dali and hanging out in Berlin’s avant-garde scene. It just took the Dream a few releases to get there – to “un-band” in a sense, and drop the rock instruments entirely. Their new toys? The first generation of synthesizer technology, hefty analog synths and mellotrons that weighed as much as a refrigerator but were also the source of hot, largely unheard of cosmic sounds. It was space age voodoo at the press of a key.

Read the rest of the review.