Post 191: In which Loud maybe hasn't learned his lesson about posting critical reviews of music on the internets

10 Posts to go.

I'm not sure I have a best album of 2009, at least, not one that was released in 2009. I suspect that it might be related to the number of new albums which I purchased this year: 1. The album in question - Imogen Heap's Ellipse - is...good. The songs are catchy, and they've already started to grow on me a little. Thing is, it feels cheap to declare a winner by default, especially in this instance; you see, I don't like Ellipse more than I like Speak For Yourself (Heap's previous release).

One review I read came fairly close to the mark when it said that Ellipse wasn't lacking in and of itself, but what it didn't have was a single track with the heart-stopping power of Hide And Seek. I concur, but there's more to it than that. What Speak For Yourself has going for it is an emotional honesty that verges on brutal. The album was a procession of songs, each of which spoke to something that you yourself had undoubtedly felt: unrequited longing/sexual tension (Goodnight and Go), frustrated/failing relationships (Loose Ends, The Walk), infatuation (I am in love with you). I'll admit that I don't really have any experience with dysfunctional family drama (Just for now), but even then the song still works. Ellipse has beautiful songs (esp Tidal), and I do approve that Heap is not sitting on her heels writing variations on the same theme, but for a dude who is still emotionally rooted in teenage angst, there's a certain loss of that emotional truth when you move away from the familiar frustrations of love. Also, I think that even when she does tackle the same theme across both albums, I will tend to prefer the earlier release (ie. Goodnight and Go vs. Swoon*). Sure I didn't have a 'best of 2005' award for music, so it isn't as though I denied an award to the album I liked more, but even so it feels like giving a director an Oscar for something that wasn't their best work simply because they deserve to have one but keep having it poached them (this happened to Scorsese, I think?). Well, like that except no one even pretends that this is an important accolade.

*Side note: If you listen to her talk about this song, you'll notice that the way she says the word "Swoon" is positively sublime.

Looking at past releases that I have discovered this year, the obvious choice would be the work of Coheed and Cambria. A month or so ago I would have said without question that Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV Volume 1: From Fear Through The Eyes Of Madness was without question my favourite, but now I'm kind of torn between that and In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3. Thing is, I think it's a function of having listened to the former much more until very recently, so I have worn one out, but not the other. I think I like the flow of the earlier album (In Keeping Secrets) a little more, in that it has a generally higher energy level across the middle tracks than does its successor.

I imagine that unless you own all these albums, this post is pretty awfully annoying. I don't have a lot of time now, but I'll go back and link all the tracks so you can get an idea of what I mean.

I went on a music finding quest several weeks ago, but I found that some artists had a single song that I thought outshone the rest of their respective albums. Blow Away, by A Fine Frenzy, and Foundations, by Kate Nash are prime examples. The songs stand up, but the albums as a whole I don't think I like nearly enough to call "Best of '09".

Another factor to consider is that when I'm evaluating an album, I'm comparing it to the likes of Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick, The Clash's London Calling, Talking Heads' Speaking in Tongues, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon...albums that I will listen to from end to end, albums that have withstood the test of time...albums like people don't make anymore. I will, that said, listen to a Coheed and Cambria album all the way through, but that's a rarity for something so recent. It also has a lot to do with how one listens to concept albums (especially when they are telling a story). They're not J-Tull, but at least they can present me with an album that is compelling as an album, and not just as "oh hey there are some good songs on this thing".

I guess what I am saying is that I don't know what my best album of 2009 is, but I think I WOULD know it if I saw it. I'll likely be back to edit this one, because I think I can do a better job of both the criticism, and explaining my criteria.

-LOUD!

On sustainability, and content recommendation systems

I Sumbleuponed (grammatically atrocious, but an important distinction must be made between this and the actual act of stumbling upon a thing of one's own accord) this page somewhat less than a week ago, and at the time I mentally filed it away for future reading, my attention span at the time being insufficient for more than a paragraph at a time, give or take. My first impression - of course - was "holy crap that's a for-real hobbit hole!", and subsequently "You can build that for three thousand pounds? Sign me up!". There's something incredibly compelling to me about building one's own house. That I could do it for what amounts to about a year's worth of my present rent is enough to make me begin thinking in earnest about the feasibility of such an undertaking. I have engineer friends (albeit electrical), I have friends of friends who are engineers, heck my sister is in first year engineering at Queens. I used to think, before my abysmal work ethic caught up with me, that I would someday be an engineer. Whether or not that was some silly idea about obligations to a profession that runs in the family I can no longer say. Of course, I must say that while I am reasonably well-traveled that I haven't a very concrete notion of where I would like to settle down and build such a house. Of course, for something like 5000-6000 dollars, maybe it wouldn't have to be permanent. I could assuredly find another individual in this world who would pay back my costs in exchange for the ability to live in a friggin' HOBBIT HOLE if I did want to move.

This aside, I wonder just how sustainable such a dwelling really is on a large scale. In much the same way that a family might move to a rural location to be "closer to nature", and yet have their ecological impact increase (because everywhere is now driving distance away, and rural service delivery does not benefit from the same economies of scale that are possible in urban areas), I fear that the density (or lack thereof) of permaculture housing may prove troublesome for overall efficiency. Consider the amount of lumber, for example, that is required for heating and cooking by wood stove. For one house, a local woods might never be harvested at a rate faster than it can regenerate. Start adding houses, though, and you've got a problem. Maybe I'm overestimating wood use, and your forests will be fine as long as you're not pumping out triremes. Maybe. Even so, the low-density approach still seems misguided. Even a village or small town made up of individually efficient low-impact homes is missing out on potential gains from the aforementioned economies of scale. My thoughts on the merits of urban density as embodied in the design philosophy of arcologies have, of course, been established.

Apropos of Stumbleupon, I thought I might comment (albeit belatedly) on it and other crowd-sourced/automated discovery systems, in this instance last.fm. One of my housemates and I had pledged to listen to a lot of new music (I have been in a pretty heavy Coheed and Cambria rut of late). It works fantastically when you're looking for, say, Canadian indie bands...but search for artists/bands similar to Co&Ca, or Imogen Heap...and, I dunno, you get maybe one or two real hits in the whole search (The Dear Hunter and A Fine Frenzy, if you want to know). The problem, I think, is that it's very easy in some cases to say "well, Arkells are for people who like Joel Plaskett and Sloan", whereas if you're looking at artists who are either alone or dominant in their niche, well, the only place to go is down. Unfortunately, the quality you're looking for isn't really related to the niche/genre, so much as the creative energy and spunk that make the more unique artists stand out. Were it only so easy to articulate that sort of connection. I could try something like "these guys are to narrative prog/emo as Imogen Heap is to self-produced female vocalists" but I don't even think this statement remotely approaches the truth. Search engines (even the really good ones) are just not very good when you're looking for "people who are as unique in their approach to their music as X". No surprises there, but when that's what you're looking for, well, I guess it's dissapointing that for all our technological advance there is just no substitute for crazy random happenstance and the human ear.

...maybe I'll have to wait until the cyborg ear?

-Loud!