Wednesday, October 26
Post #19: M83 - Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
Hey everyone, sorry about not updating in a while. I’ve fallen into the old pattern of doing only schoolwork after midterms rolled around, but I promise to be less of a slacker in the future. Anyways, here’s something I wrote for my school’s music magazine.
Artist: M83
Album: Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
Released: 2011
In this day and age, the words “epic” and “awesome” have all but lost their original meaning. When someone finds a penny on the ground? “Awesome.” You got that class you applied for? “Epic.” They’ve become not much more than placeholder words for general signs of approval. But every now and then something comes along that truly deserves those words. That something is M83’s new album.
M83 is Anthony Gonzales, a French producer who recently moved to Los Angeles. His past albums have always erred on the edge of grandiosity, but his new offering blows them all out of the water. When interviewed, Gonzalez described the album as “very, very epic” and “a soundtrack to another world.” While past songs had always hinted at the idea of creating new realities filled with ghosts and forgotten memories, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is the album where he really goes for it.
Gonzalez also cited the Smashing Pumpkins’ expansive double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness as a large influence, which may sound odd when comparing the songs themselves (more on that later), but in scope they’re actually very similar. Both albums have elements of dream worlds and encompass a wide variety of genres. However, the thing that might tie the albums together the most is the feeling you get when you listen closely to the music - a deep feeling of nostalgia.
Gonzalez has always been fixated on his teenage years, and after making countless songs that featured lovestruck girls who were caught up in their adolescent woes, he finally made an album for himself. He described his reasoning for the double album as a coping mechanism after moving to Los Angeles. He was lonely and scared and buried himself in his work and his memories of childhood. Coming off a successful world tour of his previous album Saturdays=Youth, Gonzalez had enough confidence to actually take on the endeavor and make his most adventurous album yet.
So after all of that backstory, how is the product? Are the songs good? Well, yes. Very yes. For a guy who’s made “epic” songs his entire career, he somehow outdid himself to put out an album of remarkable scale. First single “Midnight City” is a good starting point for what to expect. It follows the normal thread of most of his pop songs, with a good hook and low, almost mumbled vocals, but there is something different here. The percussion is bigger and only grows as the song progresses. The vocals go into Gonzalez’s upper range and he starts yelping, and then the track breaks down only to get built up bigger and stronger. Then, when you think the song can’t get any bigger, a wailing sax comes in for a badass solo that feels like aural sex.
However, an album with just one highlight like that wouldn’t be worth such high praise, right? Right. “Midnight City” is not the only amazing track. In fact, the album is absolutely loaded with peaks to the point that you could say Hurry Up… is a set of mountain ranges. “Midnight City” is followed by “Reunion,” an incredibly energetic pop jam about falling in love at first sight. After the transitional track “Where the Boats Go,” “Wait” comes in as a gorgeous ballad using acoustic guitars and spare percussion.
Lyrics are rather sparse on the album, with Gonzalez preferring to let the instrumentation do the talking, but what words are there strike directly in the listener’s emotional core. Lyrics such as “no time to say goodbye/disappear with the night” from “Wait” might evoke certain angsty memories of the past, but Gonzalez sings with so much honesty that you believe him. In the end that’s what Gonzalez is going for. He wants to take you back in time, to your past loves and losses.
One of the most obvious stabs at childhood is “Raconte-Moi Une Histoire” (French for “tell me a story”), where a little girl tells a tale of a magic frog who turns your world upside down, and then turns you into a frog. It’s weird, for sure, and a lot of it is reminiscent of drug trips, but there’s this sense of innocence in the girl’s voice. She sounds like she’s making it up as she goes, laughing, as the synths around her get brighter, cresting when she talks about becoming best friends with you. The idea that a child you don’t know goes from being a stranger to being your best friend is four minutes flat? That? That’s childhood.
Regardless, a double album can’t hold up if it doesn’t please all the way through, and all the tracks I’ve listed are just from the first half of the album. So first, is the second half as good as the first? No. Is it still good? Yes. It’s almost impossible to top the trifecta of the spinechilling “Intro” featuring Zola Jesus, “Midnight City,” and “Reunion,” but the second half has its share of incredible cuts. “New Map” is another pop gem, with jangly guitars and hooks coming fast and furious. “My Tears Are Becoming a Sea” features a gorgeous organ, echoing brass, and enough strings to fill a symphony hall, all of which is new territory for Gonzalez. The spellbinding “Splendor” floats along on clouds, evoking thoughts of ELO’s “Fire on High” and early 80s synthpop.
Really, I could go on forever about each track, but what’s more important is how all the songs come together to form a complete package. One of the most daunting problems of making a good double album is keeping the listener’s attention throughout the length of the album, something that many non-double albums fail to do these days. However, Hurry Up… is an incredibly entertaining listen all the day through, ranging through tons of styles and many new instruments for M83, such as acoustic guitar, saxophone, and brass sections. This is how a double album should be executed: it’s a playground for an artist who’s not afraid to try something different on every track.
What’s also important to mention is the album’s sequencing. Gonzalez arranges the tracks so that no transition feels too jarring, at times putting is sublime transitional tracks in between to ease the listener into a new song. In doing so, he’s created something rarely seen these days: a double album that’s a pleasure to listen all the way through. At first, it may seem like the poppier offerings are the only pieces worth listening to, but give the album time. Each track has its own story to tell through it instruments, rhythm, and sometimes even the song titles (see: “Klaus I Love You” and “When Will You Come Home?”).
From “Intro” to “Outro,” Anthony Gonzalez has made a sprawling album of glorious highs that never seem to stop. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is an adventure through youth in its most essential form, recalling the first times you felt truly sad and truly happy. It’s less an alternate world and more a time machine that points at essential parts of anyone’s life, and it pulls it all off beautifully. There’s only one way to describe it: epic.
Sunday, October 2
Post #18: Obligatory Music Rant
“It’s ironic that in the same month that the iPod is celebrating its 10th anniversary, Pink Floyd should be re-releasing their entire back catalogue. Never once – unless you count See Emily Play – did they ever make a pop single worthy of the name. Yet they were and are one of the greatest ever bands, achieving that rare feat of making music which is complex, subtle and involving while selling gazillions of records. Can you imagine them getting away with an album like Dark Side of the Moon today? Of course you can’t. The iPod generation would never allow it. Within 30 seconds of the opening instrumental track, they’d be running screaming for their Katy Perry, their Ke$ha and their N-Dubz. Proper music: with hooks and beats and Autotune and stuff.”
-James Delingpole of the Telegraph
Hello people, I am stepping out of my general douche shadow to give some social commentary about being a general douche.
There are good writers and bad writers. Good writers inspire readers to further pursue a subject and find things they would normally avoid. Bad writers make pieces for a niche audience that further isolate those who aren’t in that niche. This arbitrary division of writing, however, is by no means a be-all-end-all of writing. I’m not even an English major. I’ve been told for the majority of my school life that I’m a very bad writer, but I stick to these beliefs nonetheless. Sure, at times that description of “bad writing” can be “good writing” in that those who aren’t in the group want to check out the hype (see: My Little Pony fans talking to other fans), but I feel that the majority of pieces scripted in that way make less fans, not more.
That said, this is more about being a music writer in general. I wouldn’t call myself a professional music writer or anything, but I sure as shit can tell when someone else is bad at it. The marriage of pretension and music has become so mainstream that hipsters are jumping ship (not really). But the fact that there are so many articles out there that proclaim the death of music due to, I don’t know, whatever’s popular these days is worrying. We have 1) a group of people who honestly believe that the past had the best music because they were there, 2) a group of people who honestly believe that the past had the best music because they cannot stand the music of today, and 3) a group of people who believe modern-day music is the best there is because they never looked into music before the day they were born. This is a huge generalization, though, and I am aware that the majority of listeners out there are in between. Still, for the sake of this rant, let’s pigeonhole a bit.
For groups 1 and 2, they’re going to be in complete agreement with this article. If they could meet the author in person, they’d slap him on the back and then take him out for a drink, remembering the “good old days” when real singers sang and a live show was nothing more than people onstage playing their songs. Those in group 1 would talk about seeing the Clash in a smelly bar while those in group 2 would look on with a combination of jealousy and lust. These people are buried in nostalgia (sometimes feigned) and cover their ears with giant headphones whenever someone tries to show them good “modern day music”.
Group 3 would meet the article with disgust and either want:
- the author fired
- the author slapped in the face
- the author dead
And yeah, they have every right to be mad. Here’s the thing: music can be such a passive thing but also one of the most meaningful aspects of our lives. When someone insults our music, it feels like someone insults us. We don’t get as up in arms about people disliking movies. It’s only music that hits us so hard. The usual reactions to an insult are listed above, and given the relative anonymity/empty threats of the internet, you’re going to see a lot more extreme feelings about the guy. When pressed to listen to oldies, people in group 3 will most likely stuff earbuds in their ears and put on what they like.
In my opinion, Group 3 has a right to be pissed off at the article. Maybe not to the point that he should be slapped, but I feel that since he is squarely in group 1/2, and not 3, he’s making sweeping generalizations about modern music. Just as much as a person in group 3 would not know how to dive right into Pink Floyd without knowing about the band, era, etc.
The whole reason I’m taking so much time to actually talk about this though is how the idea of a “music critic” has become a piece of ridicule as of late. From one side, it’s the fact that this guy obviously is so close-minded that his head is stuck up his own ass, but that’s the only part of it. The air of arrogance is so overbearing that people couldn’t care less what he was saying. He could have been just crowing about how much better Fritos are and people would still be pissed. That tone of voice has become the norm in music writing and it seriously has to stop. People aren’t respecting critics because of this writing, and it’s only alienating people you could show great things to.
But the response to the critics hasn’t been all that great either. There’s this…repulsion to people who want to write about music that creeps me the hell out. I feel like I have to shake off tons of stereotypes before I can say a word, saying “yes I like some pop music too. The 90s and 00s has a lot of rich music from many genres, like the 70s and 80s, etc.” I want to say why I like/dislike something without getting pelted with “HIPSTER!” labels and general spite. I want to show people music they wouldn’t have seen before. That’s what music is for me. It’s meant to be shared.
If I wanted to make an overarching statement about this tumblr, I’d say I made it because I want to show people from group 1, 2, and 3 things they once hated for no reason. I want to give context to things that can at first sound superficial or boring. More info gives music depth, much more depth than the beats, hooks, lyrics, or instruments might show. Sure, I’m dodging a lot of negativity by only talking about albums I like, but I still feel like I’m treading on dangerous ground.
There was much more to the 70s than Pink Floyd, much like how there’s much more to the 10s than Ke$ha. Opinion should be without sensationalism and attempts to push bias as facts. Readers should try to consider the other person’s perspective, because when everything comes together perfectly, that’s when two very different people can actually connect over something that they both treasure. That is what music writing is all about.
Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox now. Album retrospectives will continue as usual next week.
Sunday, September 25
Post #17: Os Mutantes - Os Mutantes
Holy shit where did all of you followers come from. As in, during the time in which i was absent I gained followers instead of lost all of them to more interesting, often updated tumblrs. Cool! I’m gonna try to get back on the wagon too, because I’ve put this off for way too long.
Artist: Os Mutantes
Album: Os Mutantes
Released: 1968
…and now you’ve found out my other, less embarrassing secret. I love Brazilian music. My mother grew up in Brazil, and when she moved to the states, the music came with her. This was around the late 60s or so, and it was an exciting time for Brazil, at least culturally. The Tropicália (or Tropicalismo) movement was pushing Brazilian music in exciting new directions, encompassing elements of Afropop, rock, and traditional Brazilian folk. It was one of the brightest and most fascinating movements in Brazil’s history. Politically, Brazil was a military state that oppressed the people, leading to many protests and riots. This turmoil lasted for decades until 1985, when Brazil made the full transition to democracy once again. However, in the wake of the regime, the culture of Brazil had risen and fell, and it wasn’t until the late 80s that some of the icons of the 60s could finally come back.
Brazil during the military regime limited speech, so a lot of the protest songs that artists wrote were banned and the artists put in jail. While Os Mutantes never suffered this fate, other Tropicalia legends such as Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Gal Costa were squeezed by the government and eventually either had to leave Brazil, change their style, or face imprisonment. Thing is, the music didn’t always attack the government, but rather the government simply didn’t understand it. They chose to filter out the new and different and chose to stick with what was familiar. That inevitably led to the demise of the movement, lasting less than five years. However, the effect it had on the world of music was far-reaching.
Os Mutantes were formed by brothers Arnaldo and Sérgio Dias Baptista and singer Rita Lee in 1968. Their equipment was all homemade and their sound guy was another Baptista, Cláudio César Dias. The result was something that sounded incredibly lo-fi, but also unique. Their guitars were one of a kind, and they were happy with that. Their sound at the beginning of their more than forty-year career consisted of a distinct psychedelic bent, as it was the hip thing at the time. They started playing television performances, and got noticed by Gilberto Gil, an aforementioned pioneer of Tropicália. He brought Os Mutantes into the movement, and that’s where they really blossomed.
You can tell how ridiculous this group is just from the album cover. There they are, posing in what could possibly be their mom’s living room, giving the camera a semi-serious glare. However they look absolutely ridiculous with the moptop haircuts and giant ponchos. Something tells me that wasn’t the style at the time.
But, as usual, I digress. An album can really only stand up on its music, not its album art. Thankfully, Os Mutantes’ self-titled debut holds up very well. Comprised of 11 tracks and clocking in at 36 minutes, the album goes by pretty quickly, yet Os Mutantes manage to stuff so many hooks in that time. Perhaps one of their most exemplary songs is the opening track, “Panis et Circenses.” It starts off with a bombastic horn fanfare, then goes into a soft-spoken folk movement, then abruptly segues into the actual “song” section, where the only instrumentation is a synth, brass, and a tambourine backing the main hook, sang by all the Mutantes. Then, just as abruptly, their vocals pitch shift out and a distorted guitar + ocarina play a slow solo that builds up into an accelerated version of the chorus. Horns and organ join in, and before you know it, the song is over, giving way to the sounds of keys/silverware/metal object falling, and “Blue Danube” playing softly in the background. It’s kind of all over the place, but it’s catchy as hell and each section plays for so little time that you want to repeat just to hear a section again.
Oh, and the song wasn’t even written by Os Mutantes. It was written by Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. However, Os Mutantes were the only artists who ever performed this song, making it “theirs”. That was the style of the movement, really. It was a bunch of people writing songs that their friends would record.
The rest of the album follows in the same vein of “Panis et Circenses.” A lot of it sounds DIY, with voices intentionally muffled, guitars distorted, and chaotic percussion. Though it’s with this style that the album really gets its charm. Os Mutantes sounds like it was recorded in one take, where the band members jammed for a while and cut down the songs to pieces lasting no longer than four minutes. This feeling of spontaneity makes such songs as “A Minha Menina,” “Bat Macumba,” and “Baby” more than just covers. But there are also moments where Os Mutantes scale back on the frenetic pop and sing slow ballads using rich harmonies and subtle instrumentation. “O Relógio” and “Le Premier Bonheur du Jour” feature Rita Lee’s gorgeous soft-spoken voice as she sings near-lullabies. These songs are a great break from the Baptista brothers’ singing and add an element of sophistication to the group, showing that they’re more than just silly party starters.
In the end, this album is something to behold all the way through as a perfect example of the band’s strengths, but these tracks are also incredibly welcome when coming up on random. Each track has enough hooks and left turns to stand on its own and keep the listener interested. That’s a rarity these days. There’s been a rebirth in do it yourself music, but it’s nice to revisit the oldies and know that they still sound like no one else.
Sunday, May 22
Post #16: The Antlers - Hospice
Hey again. I wrote this article for my school’s magazine. I know it doesn’t really fit into the criteria of “classic album,” but I like this album a lot and really do think it deserves some more praise. I also updated the Screamadelica post because I saw a ton fo typos in it and thought that just would not do.
Artist: The Antlers
Album: Hospice
Released: 2009
Every now and then I flood my music library with tons of new music, be it from a productive day at the record shop, an impulse buying spree on the Amazon MP3 store, or a hedonistic dive into the world of evil, evil downloading. This usually results in about five or six new albums that I’ve never listened to getting added to the perpetual shuffle of my iTunes. It usually takes a few days, weeks, or even months until I give those albums my full attention.
Then there’s this Antlers album I got sometime in late 2009, before Friday Night Rock booked them for a show. I gave the album a quick run-through as a primer and then proceeded to shout my drunken face off to every one of lead singer Peter Silberman’s pieces. I didn’t really know what I was saying, and the only song I really paid attention to was the folksy, fun tune “Two,” but it was a great show nonetheless. Though it may now be seen through an alcohol-induced haze, the band had this aura around them of complete power and emotion, like they were tearing through space and time and filling the rips with noise. And that was before I knew what the album was about.
Emotionally taxing albums have become a bit of a mainstay for “indie” bands these days. Ever since the Arcade Fire’s Funeral, it’s been completely acceptable to let everything out and just have a good cry. The only possible annoyance one might have is that every emotional album has been held up to Funeral’s high standard, which eventually gives the music a simple “sounds like Arcade Fire” tag. The Antlers have had that label attached so often, it might as well be their tagline, but there’s something different about this group.
Frontman Peter Silberman was coming off a rather rough patch in his life in New York when he decided to cobble the album together. Now, this might sound a bit like Bon Iver’s reemergence into the musical world, but there is one crucial disparity. While the Wisconsin woods that inspired Bon Iver’s folk music made it feel warm and intimate, the Antlers’ sound is loud and cold. Manhattan can be an incredibly terrifying place when you’re in Silberman’s mind. He hasn’t explicitly said what happened, but it’s something about abandoning and losing his friends, losing his girlfriend, and becoming a hermit in a city of millions. The loud guitar crash and ambient electronics on Hospice sound like the looming skyscrapers that made the city a prison for him. And then you hear the lyrics.
Hospice is a concept album, meaning that when the tracks are played in order, they tell a story. The tale the Hospice weaves is a heavy one; it’s something that will make you cry, be them tears you don’t want anyone to see, a quiet cry to yourself when you’re alone in your bed, or a breakdown on the subway when everything comes back. It tells a story about a hospital employee who falls in love with a terminally ill patient. They quickly marry, but their relationship is emotionally abusive, and even in her death nothing is resolved. The minimalistic album art with the hospital bracelet says it all. And if that’s not obvious enough, track titles such as “Atrophy,” “Shiva,” and “Wake” drive the point home. Yes, Hospice is an album that will emotionally destroy you, but in the most beautiful way possible.
It starts off with “Prologue,” a slow drone of an instrumental that reminds you of malfunctioning machinery while some instrument tries to plink its last breaths under the distortion. It opens the curtains and welcomes the listener. Immediately following it is “Kettering,” a slow ballad of Silberman gently crooning about the day the protagonist met her for the first time. His words are dripping with regret, like “I should have quit” and “there was no saving you.” The track fades into a prolonged outro, filled with clamoring drums and far-off wavering croons set to politely distorted guitar. Next is “Sylvia,” starting off with more malfunctioning electronics and a quickened heartbeat. Silberman’s quiet falsetto gives way to the anthemic chorus of the protagonist urging Sylvia to respond to him and take his help, instead of attempting to commit suicide. The coda is another soft verse about the amount of emotional damage Sylvia is doing to the protagonist by fighting with him, and how he confides in her when she’s asleep.
Depressed yet? Okay, after “Sylvia” is “Atrophy,” a song about how the protagonist sympathizes with Sylvia so much that he wishes he could transfer the cancer to him to spare her of her suffering. As they become closer, we get an idea of how painful it is to see each other suffer. She’s frustrated, angry, shouting at him while he’s just trying whatever he can to help her, but it’s never enough. The torment comes to a climax in the wall of electronics, finally going berserk. Then it’s just Silberman and a guitar wishing for some kind of sympathy from those around him, asking for anyone to care like he does.
“Bear” is the following track and one of the centerpieces of the album. It starts with a lithe lullaby of Silberman telling Sylvia about how they’re going to make their relationship work, even though all their friends have left and they’re “terrified of one another and terrified of what that means.” The chorus of “We’re too old/we’re not old at all” sums up everything they feel, aging decades in weeks but also remembering what the numbers attached to their age really mean. The track then segues into “Thirteen,” a mostly instrumental track save for a gorgeous guest vocal by Sharon Von Etten, calling weakly “Pull me out/dig me out.” A speaker hums in the back, leading us into “Two,” the other major centerpiece. The casually strummed guitar sounds oddly cheerful, but the lyrics are once again show the true emotions. We hear about Sylvia’s abusive childhood, her struggles with anorexia, and how it led to her hating the protagonist even more. The “Be My Baby” beat propels the track into the following verses with the apex of the song being the couplets “There’s two people talking inside your brain/two people believing that I’m the one to blame/two different voices coming out of your mouth/while I’m too cold to care and too sick to shout.”
Cold, discordant howls fill the coda before the light childhood chime announces “Shiva,” a look into the life of the protagonist after Sylvia dies. The last thing she did with him was give the wedding ring back, leaving him alone in the hospital. “Wake” comes afterward, with a mourning choir providing all the instruments necessary, as short breaths, the ones that occur when you’re sobbing, break the drone. The song keeps on accelerating until the end, where Silberman shouts, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you you deserve that” over a wall of sound that would put Phil Spector to shame.
The final track is simply titled “Epilogue,” where the protagonist reflects on his life after Sylvia. He’s been let go from the hospital and doesn’t talk to anyone anymore. He’s haunted by his memories, feeling like he’s been buried alive with her. At times at night she comes to him, presses herself up against his face and goes through everything with him. As the protagonist recalls, “You’re screaming/and cursing/and angry/and hurting me./Then smiling/and crying/apologizing.” As his falsetto hits its limits the track goes to an electronic lullaby, all the machines working again, fading off into the distance.
What may be the most striking after every listen is how such a bizarre story hits so many people so hard. There’s this general love for both characters here that just pulls at your heartstrings, akin to the pain everyone felt for Jeff Mangum when he wrote In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. There’s this general feeling of catharsis when it’s all over, where you’re incredibly sad but also hopeful. Hospice feels like the answer to the question “is it better to have loved and lost or to have never loved at all?”
So go get this album. Open up a lyrics site, and follow along. It’s something else.
Wednesday, April 13
Post #15: The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
By request, I’ll do this 1999 classic. I do take requests, you know! Let me know if you wanna see an album reviewed!
Artist: The Flaming Lips
Album: The Soft Bulletin
Released: 1999
In 1998 the Flaming Lips were at an odd moment in their career. The past few years they’d been riding on the surprise success of “She Don’t Use Jelly,” a lo-fi jam that just happened to be lampooned on Beavis and Butt-head. It hit #9 on the Billboard Modern Rock charts in 1994, and it still is the Flaming Lips’ highest charting song. The fact that they haven’t matched that apex isn’t too surprising though. The Flaming Lips have always been so amazingly weird that anyone listening to their music who doesn’t get a contact high from it has to be dead.
That said, their career after the surprise smash hit “She Don’t Use Jelly” included the peculiar follow-up “Clouds Taste Metallic,” which launched then back into indie obscurity. They then decided to do something completely out of left-field, the Zaireeka project. Zaireeka was their 1996 release on four separate discs, meant to be played simultaneously on four separate sound systems. Remember, this is 1996. People didn’t just have four speaker systems lying around. So the album was in the end, a flop, because it was so difficult to actually listen to it all on the first place. But that was in the end what the Flaming Lips really wanted. They weren’t really out to make music for people to listen to, they’re out there to make weird fucking shit that they like.
And then came The Soft Bulletin. Every kind of pretense that the Lips may have built up for themselves was shattered with the release of this album. It’s incredibly accessible, poignant, and made people cry. Perhaps, in a way, an album of really great psych-pop songs was a weird move for a band usually so inaccessible that its core fans were the kind of people who lived life in a fuzzy haze. But that might be reading too much into things. Maybe they just wanted to make a bunch of real songs, instead of making people listen to four CDs at the same time. Yeah, let’s go with that.
But back to the album, The Soft Bulletin is not only a collection of great tracks, but also a snapshot of the world at the crest of the millennium. Remember Y2K? Remember AOL? Remember getting excited over writing the date 9/9/99? This album encapsulates that feeling. It’s a feeling of looking towards the future but also an overwhelming feeling of instant nostalgia. Every song feels like a moment where you say to yourself, “I’m going to remember this for a long time.”
Take one of the many standout tracks, “Suddenly Everything Has Changed.” It’s a simple song packed with meaning. The protagonist, you, are doing mundane daily tasks and pause. “And it goes fast/you think of the past./Suddenly everything has changed.” It’s that moment when you look back on your life and think of where you’ve come from and where you’re going. It’s about life, its fleeting nature, and grappling with mortality. Thinking about growing up and the realization that you might already be an adult. It’s that click in your head when everything rushes to you. It’s a beautiful event.
But it’s more than just thinking about life. There’s also standout singles “Race for the Prize” and “Waitin’ for a Superman” there to talk about the pursuit of science at the cost of the life of a scientist. At an age where stem cells and AIDS research were really revving up, scientists were giving all their time to finding cures for diseases. The news, however, was really impatient, asking why there’d been no progress. The Lips spoke for those scientists. “They’re just humans/with wives and children” Wayne Coyne replies in “Race for the Prize.” “Tell everybody waiting for superman/that they should try to hold on best they can” Coyne says in “Waiting for a Superman.” It’s simple words, but it says a lot. A reminder that everyone’s still human. You can’t expect the future in a day.
But there’s also reminders of nature around you. “Buggin’” simply tells you about the little pests that fly everywhere, but it’s so beautifully produced that it’s not an annoyance, but another gorgeous part of nature. “What is the Light?” encapsulates that feeling of looking up on a dark night and feeling yourself eaten up by the vastness up in the sky. The reverberating piano feels likes the brightness of those stars incomprehensible distances away. It might make you feel insignificant, but it’s done in an elegant veil of wonder.
The title The Soft Bulletin is incredibly fitting as well. For an album by crazy people, it’s surprisingly straightforward in its delivery, as any bulletin should be. Every aspect of the end of a decade feels represented in this album. In a way, it’s a time capsule that should be buried for decades, to be unearthed by future scholars. It’s much more of a cultural than the SImpsons or NFL or modern art. The albums contains the fears, hopes, and dreams of the people in what now seems like a bygone era, except they’re still here today. In a way, listening to this album more then a decade after its release is a good reminder of what you, the listener, were doing in 1999. And then, suddenly, everything has changed.
