{"id":6303,"date":"2009-07-17T14:09:28","date_gmt":"2009-07-17T18:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=6303"},"modified":"2009-07-17T14:09:28","modified_gmt":"2009-07-17T18:09:28","slug":"listening-to-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=6303","title":{"rendered":"Listening To..."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Shit I been listening to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Wilco - Wilco (the album)<\/strong>. I'm going to guess that the self-referential title apparently refers to the way many of the songs here sound like they were grown from clippings of old Wilco songs. For example, \"I'll Fight\" sounds like a reworking of \"On and On and On\" from the last Wilco record (<em>Sky Blue Sky<\/em>); the verses in \"Wilco (the song)\" reminds me of something from <em>Mermaid Avenue<\/em>; and there are subtler echoes of other songs scattered throughout. Or maybe that's not the point. I haven't read any interviews about this, so I don't know the official explanation for the title. But, either way, many of the songs here remind me of songs on other Wilco records, and the new songs just aren't as good as the ones they remind me of - a lot of the songs feel lifeless or bored. And that's a problem. It's one thing to have less-than-stellar songs, but when those songs remind you of older, better songs, it makes the new songs seem like a real letdown. And that hurts my heart.\n<p>Two raquos: &raquo; &raquo;<\/p>\n<li><strong>The Breeders -Mountain Battles<\/strong>. The Breeders, too, have echoes of their older stuff, on this new record. But, to be fair (and really, to be fair to Wilco, as well), a lot of that is simply <em>style<\/em>. Unlike Wilco, however, The Breeders wrote an album with a bunch of interesting songs. Well, they're interesting if you dug the weird, angular minimalism of their <em>Last Splash<\/em> and\/or <em>Pod <\/em>records from way back in the early 90's, that is (the whole albums, not just \"Cannonball\" and \"Divine Hammer\" - there's nothing like either of those on this record). There is a version of the old Mexican classic ballad, \"Regalame Esta Noche\", however, which somehow doesn't seem strange, and in fact shows off how surprisingly nice Kim Deal's voice can be. I like it. I've missed The Breeders.\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/breedersdigest.net>The Breeders Digest<\/a>, <http:\/\/breedersdigest.net\/2008\/behind-the-scenes\/all-wave-recording\/\">All Wave Recording<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Four raquos: &raquo; &raquo;  &raquo; &raquo;<\/p>\n<li><strong>Polvo - Polvo (EP)<\/strong>. This was their first release. It's really raw and the songs aren't quite as strong as things they'd do later on, and the mixes are pretty rough. But, it's a good first step.\n<p>Review <strong>updated <\/strong>after i gave it a listen with open ears, and a quart of Brooklyn Local 1! It makes everything better. Also, I've discovered that it's trivially easy to play along to any Polvo song - play a note on the B string, and strum all three bottom strings, then play a note two frets higher with a lot of vibrato. Slide up and down the string every now and then. As long as you keep in time with the drums, it'll work just fine.<\/p>\n<p>Three raquos: &raquo; &raquo; &raquo;<\/p>\n<li><strong>Black Sabbath - Volume 4<\/strong>. I like the previous two (<em>Paranoid <\/em>and <em>Master of Reality<\/em>) much better. And if only somebody had stopped Ozzy from doing the ballad on this record, the world may have been spared decades of subsequent Ozzy ballads. And the strings? Blech. If only someone could've stepped in and said \"No, this is not metal! Bad Ozzy!\" that shit could've been nipped in the bud. Two songs, \"Supernaut\" and \"Snowblind\", save the record from being completely horrible, though.\n<p>Two raquos: &raquo; &raquo;\n<\/ul>\n<p>You?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shit I been listening to: Wilco - Wilco (the album). I'm going to guess that the self-referential title apparently refers to the way many of the songs here sound like they were grown from clippings of old Wilco songs. For example, \"I'll Fight\" sounds like a reworking of \"On and On and On\" from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-listening-to","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}