Modern Guilt

Modern Guilt was released on July 8, 2008. It is Beck's latest record. It doesn't particularly stand out in any way. It is very short, and very electronic. Perhaps further listening will someday reveal more about this album.

All You Need Is Me

Morrissey's latest album came out in February. It is titled Years of Refusal, and it is quite good. Morrissey still rocks out immensely. Lots of short, catchy songs. Only two slower songs: "It's Not Your Birthday Anymore" and "You Were Good In Your Time". And that great voice of his... I will be looking forward to more listens of this album in the future.

O Valencia!

I first heard "O Valencia!" on a compilation. The Decemberists are part of this year's lineup at Osheaga and they put out a new album a month ago. For all those reasons, I decided to get one of their albums. I didn't feel like getting their newest album, though, so I got The Crane Wife. Having heard only "O Valencia!" from them, I thought they would be a cliché indie band, but "O Valencia!" is actually the happiest song on the CD. (It's not that happy, actually. I just checked the lyrics... As a music listener, I don't pay that much attention to lyrics.) The music gets quite tragic at times, such as on "The Island" and on "When The War Came". "The Island" is one of the album's epic, multiple-parts, 10-minutes songs, the other one being "The Crane Wife 1 and 2". "The Perfect Crime 2" is a surprising and catchy song. In the second part of the album, things get a bit slower, with "Shankhill Butchers" and "Summersong". All in all, I'm glad The Decemberists aren't as cliché as I thought they would be.

The Royal We

I got the new Silversun Pickups album, Swoon. It came out last week. I first heard their song "Lazy Eye" on Rock Band 2. (I know, shoot me.) I think that song is pretty catchy, and there seemed to be a lot of buzz around the new album, so I decided to check it out. Honestly, though, I don't really understand what the buzz is about. They seem pretty average to me. I often feel unqualified to write an album review because I don't know shit about music theory. Perhaps someone who does could help me understand Silversun Pickups. What baffles me the most about this group is that the vocalist is actually a man. He sounds like a tough girl to me.

Anyway, let's break it down: "There's No Secrets This Year" and "The Royal We", the first two songs, are catchy enough. What makes "Growing Old Is Getting Old" interesting is that it becomes very different midway through. "It's Nice To Know You Work Alone" is kind of a silly song. "Panic Switch" is a cool little song. "Draining" and "Catch & Release" are also cool, but are on the slower side. As for the rest of the album, I do not care enough yet to write anything about it...

Femme Fatale

I believe Factory Girl was an overlooked movie. It is a biopic of Edie Sedgwick, one of Andy Warhol's muses. It stars Sienna Miller as Edie, and she is charming in the movie. (Although Sienna Miller, in real life, hooked up with a married man... gasp.) It also stars Guy Pearce as Andy Warhol. I loved him in Memento. (If you have never heard of this movie, watch it ASAP. It is one of my favourite movies and it was directed by Christopher Nolan, the director of The Dark Knight.) Andy Warhol, in this movie, is an asshole. I know this movie is a dramatization, but I believe Andy Warhol was also an asshole in real life. My opinion is pretty biased, though. It rests solely on this movie and on the book Please Kill Me: An Oral History of the Punk Movement. (This book was already mentioned in this blog once... Find out where! LOTS OF FUN PARENTHESES TONIGHT, WOOHOO.) Perhaps this is only going on in my own little crazy mind, but it seems to me that, in pop culture, one must take sides. One is more Letterman than Leno, or more "Heroes" than "Lost". And Factory Girl and Please Kill Me made me more Edie Sedgwick and Velvet Underground than Andy Warhol. This is stupid, because I know someone who likes both Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground. And Please Kill Me also portrays Lou Reed as an asshole. ANYWAYS, watch Factory Girl. It is an interesting movie, filmed in a chaotic way. It is the story of how a girl rose quickly to fame only to be thrown off by her mentor. There, you got my two cents. Be warned, though: some critic called this movie "Edie Sedgwick for dummies". Oh well, I just try to do my best.

The Hand That Feeds

Last week iTunes raised their prices. Some songs, the most popular ones, are now 1,29$ instead of 0,99$. Some of the older songs had their prices brought down to 0,69$. Now, I find no good reason for this change. As Trent Reznor's agent said, more or less: "In this time of bad economy, do you really want to put off the people who are still willing to pay for music?" Not only that, but there are very few songs that actually had their prices up. Not every song in iTunes' top 10 is 1,29$. Well, all the better, is what you'll tell me. But I disagree. Why upset us with these news and then do very little about it? It's completely irrational, I know. But I guess I don't like small disturbances in my life. Or something.

Soft Shock

Let me tell you about something that happened to me a little while ago. I was in the bus, and this guy was talking on the phone with his iPhone. He had his earphones on and was talking through a little speaker. This is one of the things I find the most unnatural in the world. People who talk on the phone on devices other than a phone just look crazy. It is even worse when it is only an earpiece. Often you will never see the earpiece, and will just assume that the person is talking to himself. That's not all that happened with the guy on the bus, though. I know that with the new iPod nanos, you can shuffle through the songs by shaking your iPod. I didn't know you could do that with an iPhone, though. So after talking like a madman on the phone with a device other than a phone, the guy started shaking his iPhone like a madman to shuffle through songs.

I think he saw me smirking at him, because he was staring at me afterwards.

Dudley

Another restaurant, another favorite of my family. This time it's on the cheaper side, and mainly Mediterranean. It's also pretty far away, from my point of view, somewhere in the north of Montreal, but I could be wrong. The name is Dima. We start with various spreads, in which we dip pita bread. There's the classic hoummos; metabaal, which is made from eggplant; and mouhammara, which is a mix of pine nuts and pomegranate. I could be awfully wrong about all the different spellings. Other starters include taboulé, a parsley salad; akras naanaa, which is meat with a touch of mint; and sausages. I then had shish taouk: chicken served with hot, crispy pita, and some salad and rice. Every time we go there, we are never disappointed.

And in other news: Eminem's new song kind of sucks. And it's kind of making me sad.

Dragon Queen

Family time. We went to our favorite restaurant, M sur Masson. Translation: M on Masson, Masson being a street. We like to go there because the food is always delicious, the servings are always enormous and we are pretty chummy with the maître d'. I had forgotten about their incredible salad served with a half-cooked egg on the top. I had duck magret along with some sort of duck purée, which was absolutely scrumptious. I finished it off with a chocolate desssert. There was fine Italian wine all along. A very agreeable evening.

Hysteric

What the hell is wrong with HMV?? It's Blitz! was out of stock at their store!!! I had to go buy it in a friggin' library... Oh well, it's not that important. What is important is I GOT MY HANDS ON THE NEW YEAH YEAH YEAHS CD :D

Some people hate reviews that focus on the songs individually rather than on the album as a whole, but those are the reviews I enjoy the most. That's how I deal with an album. All in all, what I can say is: there's some incredible music, right there. Karen O's vocals are as awesome as usual, on every single song. I love "Heads Will Roll" ("Off with your head!"), but every song is great in its own way. "Runaway" is kind of sad. Generally, I tend to find some songs really sad without any good reason. "Little Shadow" is a great closer.

The CD I got had a shitload of acoustic songs on it: "Soft Rock", "Skeletons", "Hysteric", as well as "Little Shadow". They are all gorgeous :D

The art inside the CD "box" is also very original. To know what it is, buy the album in a CD format :) A CD is a beautiful thing to possess...

Slave To The Wage

Damn!! I've been buying way too many CDs these days, digital or otherwise. What the hell is wrong with me??

Here are the CDs I bought in the last month or so:

Is This Desire? - PJ Harvey

This Business of Art - Tegan and Sara

Only By The Night - Kings of Leon

Haughty Melodic - Mike Doughty

Dying To Say This To You - The Sounds

War Child Presents Heroes - Various Artists

Black Market Music - Placebo

Acid Tongue - Jenny Lewis

And these are the CDs I intend on buying soon:

Traffic and Weather - Fountains of Wayne

It's Blitz! - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever - Explosions In The Sky

Give Up - The Postal Service

Urgh.

Running To Stand Still

I have finally bought the War Child compilation. When I first heard of the concept, I thought it was very cool: an artist from the old generation chooses one song he believes is the most important amongst all of his songs, and then chooses an artist from the new generation to interpret it. Perhaps this concept was more or less applied severely, but if it was, some pretty cool things appear: for example, Leonard Cohen's favorite song of his would be "Take This Waltz", and I love that song too! And so we discover Bob Dylan likes Beck, The Clash like Lily Allen, The Ramones like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Blondie likes Franz Ferdinand, and Iggy Pop likes Peaches. Yeah Yeah Yeahs' song is pretty cool, and Elbow's version of "Running To Stand Still" is tears-worthy. I also discovered an Elvis Costello song I didn't know, and The Like's rendition is pretty catchy. 

Music When The Lights Go Out

Three songs I am listening to a lot these days:

1) "Lover, You Should Have Come Over" by Jeff Buckley - Great.

2) "The Gift" by The Velvet Underground - Is it even a song? Eight minutes of madness.

3) "Like Spinning Plates" by Radiohead - Sometimes I think I could go crazy simply from listening to some of Radiohead's songs. "Motion Picture Soundtrack" from Kid A is another good example. "Like Spinning Plates" can be found on Amnesiac. I know a lot of people think Amnesiac is almost a "Kid B", but I really like it. It is really bleak, but I like it. 

No No No

It broke my heart when she said "no".