New Yeah Yeah Yeahs!

The new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album (It's Blitz) came out last week, and it is absolutely amazing! Half of the album is a fantastic synthesis of 80's New Wave gloss and dance with their raw punk side. It's got sheen plus bite! A surprisingly logical evolution of their sound. The other half of the album is some of the most beautiful and lyrical music that they have come out with yet, along the lines of Maps, Turn Into, and the other sumptuous slow songs from albums previous. The last song Skeletons is especially amazing in this regard. The Deluxe Edition of the album contains four acoustic versions of songs from the album, including one with a string quartet accompaniment. Highly recommend you check it out.

The Wagnerian Experience Has Begun

Back in college when I first began becoming interested in opera, I listened exclusively to Italian opera, mostly Verdi and Puccini. Several roommates and friends I knew got into Wagner and were very excited to play selections from the Ring cycle, but I never understood Wagner's music, it just didn't make sense to me the way Verdi and Puccini did. My musical tastes have always run more to the simple, severe, and well-disciplined sounds, more Brahms and Sibelius than Bruckner or Mahler. But in the back of my mind I always knew there would come a time when I would grow to understand the appeal of Wagner. I even bought a CD of Tristan und Isolde (Suthaus/Flagstad/Furtwangler) and went to a San Francisco opera performance several years back, and while I enjoyed the experience, it didn't really grab a hold of me at all.

However, for a while now I've been looking for a new sound to get interested in. Despite not having heard probably half of the Italian repertoire operas (notably the operas by Bellini, and at least 2/3rds of Verdi's vast output), I have not been motivated to continue listening to any more of them. I've listened to practically every recording of Sibelius's symphonies that are out there, and despite trying to listen to Bruckner and Mahler and Shostakovich, I haven't really found anything that I can get really excited about. On the popular music side, I've been in the doldrums as well, with only a few interesting artists coming out per year since the early 2000's.

So last weekend I was doing errands at home and while ironing I flipped on the TV and saw that the Sci-Fi channel was running some mini-series called 'Dark Kingdom'. Since it was the middle of the day and there really was nothing on, I figured I'd watch it (OK, so it featured Kristanna Loken and Alicia Witt in it, so that made the decision easier!). Watching it I realized fairly quickly that it was basically the same story as Wagner's Ring cycle. For whatever reason, I thought the story was rather interesting (although I had never found the story interesting before), and decided to head to Amoeba to see if I could pick up a copy of the Ring for cheap.

Of course, there really is no such thing as a cheap copy of the Ring cycle. The cheapest is at least $80, with some sets going for close to $200. So, I decided to start out small and only get Das Rheingold. I found a copy of Solti's recording in very good condition for $15, and I remember that my college roommates raved about the recording, so I decided to purchase that one.

Quite surprisingly, I took to it from the very beginning. It may have been because the prelude was featured so prominently in the latest Terence Malick movie (the name slips my mind right now, but I didn't like the movie much, just the use of Wagner in the soundtrack). Or it may be that after listening to so much Bach recently that I've somehow matured enough to comprehend Wagner. But the end result is that I have basically been listening to it non-stop at work. I have the entire opera on repeat in my music player at work, and I find parts of it sticking in my mind when I am walking around or thinking random thoughts.

So, it's finally happened, I have progressed to a point where I can enjoy Wagner. We'll have to see if this continues through the other operas in the Ring cycle.

Springsteen Revival?

I just recently heard a new song by The Arcade Fire called 'Intervention'. I didn't think much of the first album by The Arcade Fire, but this song was an absolute relevation! I loved the bluesy, almost gospel aspects of it, the organ notes, it was such a wonderful sound. It sounded like it had a lot of Springsteen influences, which would make it the second alt band in a year to release music that had a bit of Springsteen in it (the first being The Killer's most recent album, 'Sam's Town'). Is there a Springsteen revival going on? He himself released and album this past year, so maybe more and more of the young hipsters are discovering him and starting to draw from his music. Not a band choice to draw inspiration from, in my opinion.

Setting the Record Straight on Coldplay

I would like to clarify the situation with regards to Coldplay. They are easily one of the worst bands that has gone platinum with a record, nevermind three. Chris Martin's falsetto howling is particularly painful to listen to. Hearing him squawk around on the song 'Fix You' is one of the most excruciating experiences of my life. If Coldplay got rid of Chris Martin, they might be a semi-decent band. As it is, they are one of the worst of the mainstream bands, and easily one of the top-three most overrated (competing heavily with Red Hot Chili Peppers and James Blunt for first place).

However, there are three songs Coldplay has that are actually good, one of which qualifies as great. In order, they are:

1. The Scientist - unbelievable song. Did they really write this, or is it a cover? Very simple rhythm and chorus, revolving around the tonic and dominant chords. The best songs are simple rhythms carefully put together to generate emotion and meaning.
2. Yellow - yes, their breakout hit. A good song, contemplative but with lots of drive and energy, especially when performed live.
3. Everything's Not Lost - decent song, good guitar riff in the rhythm.

Yes, this means that 'Clocks' is not a good song, 'Speed of Sound' is not a good song, 'Trouble' it not a good song, etc. etc. I didn't forget any of those songs, I remember them and don't think they are any good.

The Beauty of Carmen

I went to see a performance of Carmen for the first time tonight. I've always loved Carmen, but had not only never seen it staged before (live or recorded), I hadn't even really read the libretto. I had mostly just listened to Callas's recording. My favorite melody (and there are so many great melodies!) has long been the main melody in the first act duet between Don Jose and Micaela, in particular the melody that begins with "Votre mère avec moi". Having never bothered to read the libretto, I assumed that this was the love theme between Don Jose and Micaela, and found it quite lovely on that level.

Tonight, when I actually saw the libretto translated in supertitles, I realized that the melody isn't a love theme at all, but rather the hope for Don Jose's reunion with his mother, and ultimately his (unfulfilled) redemption. Once I saw that, the melody became even more beautiful to me. I have long had a soft spot for stories involving redemption, and the melody is so perfectly suited to that notion of optimistic longing, of hope for a better tomorrow, that it nearly made me cry (especially when Micaela sings it again, with much greater meaning, in the third act).

The entire opera, of course, just has melody after beautiful melody throughout, it was quite a joy to see it performed live. Still, that redemption melody is easily the most beautiful one.

New Killers Song

The Killers have a new song out off of their upcoming album, you can listen to it on myspace. At first I didn't think it was very good, but towards the middle of the song, it starts to channel Bruce Springsteen and really rock out, and I'm starting to warm up to it. It's like Springsteen + glam + Cars all mixed together, it's pretty interesting. I'm excited to hear what the rest of the album sounds like, can't wait!

The Poor Man's iPod

So, my handy-dandy Rio Karma mp3 player recently died in a cacophony of odd "ticking" noises, probably the result of the hard drive permanantly crashing. I had run out of space on it about a year ago anyway, so I figured it was an opportunity to look at new mp3 players. The most obvious choice is the iPod of course. But I needed more than just 30gb, and $400 for the 60gb iPod was a little bit out of my price range. Of course, I also hate Apple products with a passion, because they usually sell style over substance, so I wasn't looking forward to buying an iPod anyway. (My ex actually bought me a 60gb iPod over Christmas, but I had her return it in favor of having her help me buy the nice little laptop that I'm using right now to compose this blog entry. :-)

So, I began doing a survey of all the other mp3 players out there. I knew I needed at least 30gb, and preferably more, but it had to cost less than an iPod. And I wanted an FM tuner because I never get to listen to the radio anymore. First up was Creative, since they generally have the best value in products. I checked out the Zen Vision:M. This product was the absolute most unintuitive thing I have ever tried. The buttons didn't work very well, so I had to press hard and multiple times, and it would zoom back and forth through the menus too much. Plus I found it hard to actually get to listen to music or use the radio. This is pretty typical of Creative products, good value but not exactly flashy or easy to use. I then tried the Philips GoGear jukebox, which worked better than the Zen but had a pretty small screen. Plus I just don't trust Philips stuff, I've had bad experiences with it. What alternatives are left? I've heard truly terrible things about the Toshiba Gigabeat line of products, including all kinds of bugs and crashes. I can't try out Dell's mp3 player since it's only available online, and I'm not about to buy something I can't try in my hands first.

Finally, while browsing around at Best Buy, I stumbled across an old mp3 playback option: the mp3 Discman. The idea behind an mp3 Discman is that in addition to being able to play CD's, it can play a bunch of mp3's burned onto a CD as well. I had owned a Panasonic mp3 Discman several years ago, but it didn't work very well and was very picky about how files were burned onto the disc. The thing that perked my interest about these devices was how dirt-cheap they were. $35 for an mp3 Discman? That's a ridiculously good deal! Consider the following: Currently almost all 30gb hard drive mp3 players are going for $300, so about $10/gb. But buying a Discman plus a 50 pack of CD-R's (about 35gb of storage space) can be as cheap as $50!! Sure, you have to burn all your mp3's onto CD-R's, and that takes time, and then you have to carry around a bunch of CD's with you. But chances are you have a burner, you have the time, and you already have CD-carrying cases. OK, so it's not as easy to carry around or as sexy as an iPod. Would you be willing to be less "sexy" and have a little more inconvenience if it would save you $250?! And if you ever needed more space, all you'd have to do is spend $10 for another 50-pack of CD-R's! It gets cheaper and cheaper the more storage space you need!

I hunted around for a Discman that had both an FM tuner and support for mp3 ID tags. I finally settled on the Sony NF430 for only $60 at Target. Add a 50-pack of CD-R's for $15 and in total I spent around $80 plus tax for my mp3 player setup. I burned four CD's worth of music and used it on a recent trip to Italy and Greece, and it performed flawlessly. The sound quality was pretty good, I got over 10 hours of music on each CD, and it wasn't too much trouble to just carry around 4 CD's with me when I decided to switch discs. It wasn't very convenient to use at the gym, so I'll probably look into some sort of hip or armband for it. But overall, considering how little I ended up paying for it, I'm quite happy about buying it.