I’m not sure how you call that feeling of fondly remembering a time perceived as ‘distant’ when it’s actually something that happened not too long ago (relatively speaking). Can we go with nostalgia? Feels odd to use nostalgia when talking about a period where you were the ’same’ person.

When you crush on a band for some time, it ends up becoming part of a moment you cherish, especially when it’s only a constant in your life for a short while. I keep thinking about The National lately. Forgotten how great they are.

I’m rusty. On better days, I could write a long album review. Now I find myself wondering why I even find an album good, beyond semi-circular arguments. Which isn’t to say I was entirely happy with what I used to be able to come up with. But it was better than nothing. Wait, was it better than nothing? Hmm. Maybe, maybe not.

I’m thinking the way to get out of that hole is through The National’s High Violet.

Every year or so I give a listen to some of those bands from the past, the ones that you’ve grown out of and you associate with specific moments of your life. Often these bands are so questionable that you can hardly justify having listened to them in the first place. Nothing falls more squarely into that last category than metal bands.

Heavy Metal was more or less responsible for turning me into a music listener. It’s what got me to pay attention to music as a phenomenon. Nowadays, though, I find it to be the complete opposite of almost everything I look for in music, and generally offensive to my sensibilities. I must have changed immensely from those days, though it doesn’t really seem like it. I have a certain affection towards the music and the subculture, but I can’t help but look at it with a critical eye.

Though I didn’t listen to metal that long, I saw enough to feel comfortable making some general observations.

There’s a sense in the metal community that their music is not merely great, but that it is greater than all other forms of music. It’s common for metal fans to only listen to metal, perhaps with some proto-metal classic rock bands thrown in the mix. Among metal fans who I interacted with, the question of whether the metal genre was enough for a listener was treated genuinely, and there really was an attitude that nothing else was worth listening to. It makes sense, if you think about it. It’s an outsider’s genre, and not exactly a ‘cool’ one; you have to convince yourself that its community is self-sufficient, that much like the world might not need you, you don’t need the world.

Metal becomes a very confrontational genre, because people are defining themselves by it, and in opposition to “decent society” or “the establishment” and whatnot. During the early 90s metal, glam, and all other excessive 80s genres were shunned in favor of alternative rock and its variants, and everything that metal represented was treated as a joke for a very long time (famously, metal’s most popular mainstream representative, Metallica, ditched the whole aesthetic and reappeared as a hard rock band). Metal fans unsurprisingly ditched the mainstream too.

One of the ways the whole superiority thing manifested itself is in what I guess you could call the quantification of music. The explanation for why metal was so much better often became a numbers game; “the most is the best”. Metal guitarists are the best because they can hit the most notes per second, metal drummers are the best because they can hit more parts of their drumkit per second than anyone else, metal vocalists are the best because they can hit the highest notes for the longest time, and so forth. Comically enough, it’s also applied to lyrics: metal lyrics become the best because they use the longest words. What you end up with is a lyric sheet full of empty nonsense, unbearably tiresome songs that serve as little more than a showcase of technical prowess, and incredibly repetitive music, because there’s only so many ways you can be a fast drummer. The whole thing can verge on the autistic, especially when you see people counting the amount of riffs on a record to prove how good it is.

If you look at this music this way, everyone else must be some sort of idiot in your eyes. When a guitar magazine publishes a “Best Guitarists Of The Decade!” list, you can scoff at Kurt Cobain being #3 (nowadays it’s probably Jack White, but at the time it was good ‘ole Kurt), because c’mon, how is he the best? Can he play Ywngie’s solos? You’re damn right he can’t. People who listen to mainstream music are people who can’t handle ‘complexity’, and metal’s complexity makes it be as good as classical music (classical music is one of the only genres that metal fans don’t regularly disparage). You can also use this metric to rehabilite trashy rock from the 80s that no one likes anymore (terrible glam bands, for example) because their solos were superior to Nirvana’s.

This all appealed to me, I suppose, because of some sense of superiority that I had, which this subculture just fueled and fueled. It was that time when you’re starting to discover anti-establishment tendencies and no one else seems to, and you feel like you’re onto something. I was questioning my own religious beliefs at the time, and a bunch of yelling about Satan seemed oddly fitting. Metal’s pretty anti-everything in that way, and lyrically it has the same focus, but is criticizing something far larger and more important.

I’m willing to concede that point to metal: it’s lyrical focus isn’t (or at least wasn’t) that bad. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s heart is in the right place, but I’ll say there’s worse places it could have been at. It’s too mythical, though. It’s not criticizing religion as a force in the world, but as some Middle Ages empire that must be defeated (preferably by dragons). It’s not criticizing politics as they are in the world, but as some new world order thing that’s utterly irrelevant to anything. I’m not trying to suggest that being literal is being right; I’m a big fan of Bob Dylan, who was hardly a realist. The thing is, if you listen to a Bob Dylan song, say, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, it’s not literal, but you can associate it to real life concerns. You can’t really do that with a song about the keeper of the seven keys or the warlock. It’s too far gone.

Put this way, it might sound as if metal is completely unredeemable. It has its moments, though. When technical skill is used in service of a good composition, it can be impressive and emotional. The speed and aggressiveness in metal aren’t really for everyone, and I’m not sure they’re sustainable for most people (it’s habitual for teenagers who listen to metal to eventually ‘mellow out’ and move to softer versions, or drop it altogether). When you’re a hormonal teenager, though, it might just be the only thing that’s crazy enough. And though I might not appreciate the qualities that make metal… well, metal, encountering those qualities was what made me think hard about what exactly was there in a song, why I liked something, what I could reasonably consider “impressive” and what I could consider “half-assed”.

I can probably point to the metal band Opeth as planting the seeds of my current musical curiosity, and eventually lead me away from metal completely. I started listening to them as they ‘broke through’, and there were a lot of mixed opinions towards them from metal fans. The band took elements from death metal (growling vocals) and some general ideas like guitar tones, but were not traditionally “metal”, the music was moodier, the instrumentation was restrained and very conventionally ‘melodic’, and they had folkish interludes and clean vocals that didn’t sound at all like the folk that metal bands usually favor. Lots of people disliked them, though, because they were “not metal”, did not have metal riffs, and were just too much of a crossover band. I loved them, though, and after that I started catching onto that ‘crazy’ idea that maybe you couldn’t measure emotion by the amount of notes in a solo.

That attitude towards the band was hardly unique. In the past few years (by which point I wasn’t really listening to metal anymore, but was familiar with the communities), metal has become more acceptable to mainstream tastes and some bands have come out to some acceptance. Within metal communities, though, they’re often looked down as impostors or poseurs, who must be trying to make a mockery out of honest metalheads. And that’s an issue that people who listen to metal are notoriously sensitive about, and I guess it’s one of the things that I find hard to accept about the whole subculture: there’s not much of a sense of humor. Sure, bands can write ‘funny’ songs every once in a while, but the idea that someone wouldn’t take metal seriously, that they’d listen to it for camp value or because they find it a bit ridiculous, can be taken as an insult.

I find that hard to accept that now, but during 2001-2002, these bands were serious business to me. The idea that this whole thing was completely ridiculous and often insane just didn’t really come to me, even as I understood (perhaps subconsciously) that the aesthetics and philosophy behind this subculture were absurd and that imitating them would be laughable (thankfully I never really adopted metal aesthetics in terms of personal presentation). Even as metal genres become more and more a parody of themselves, the attitude barely changes.

I hardly listen to metal these days, especially if it’s not a record I used to listen to. People get upset when music is referred to as being “all the same”, but a lot of metal is truly the same. There’s a lot of obsession regarding genres and sub-genres and styles and revivals, and bands are “old school Florida death metal” and “revival Bay Area thrash” and how in God’s name do you expect anything to sound fresh when you can’t leave the confines of some scene that existed for six months during the eighties? This isn’t really unique to metal, but metal’s where I’ve seen it more closely.

Besides sounding like the same old thing, I guess a real problem I have with metal is that it’s not enough for whatever range of emotions I currently have, if it’s anything at all. I can’t really think of many situations where I could realistically say “This song by Goatwhore really speaks to me right now, really gets to my soul about the stuff I’m going through”. It’s just not really very likely. This isn’t really a lifestyle change; there was never a point in my life during which songs about witches, dragons, or the underappreciated pagan lifestyle really spoke to me. The change is in what I seek from music.

These days, what I’m looking for in a song is a line or two that I can relate to, a line that seems like it has something to do with the experience of being me. There’s really no chance for that line to be “sadistic, surgeon of demise / sadist of the noblest blood”.

You can spend a while digging through Auris Apothecary and find yourself constantly amused at the creativity (if not insanity) in what they’re selling. They are a micro-label who sell limited edition records in very elaborate packaging, to the point where the packaging is the product. Release AAX-007, for example, is an “unspooled ¼” reel tape” packaged in “recycled brown-paper grocery bag scroll with silver silk-screened skeleton print”. Release AAX-012 is “Black opium-scented cassette with vertically-aligned full color artwork labelling, housed inside of a black/clear hardshell norelco case with high-resolution, full color plotter-printed artwork. Serial information printed on white adhesive paper with hand-stamped numbering in sky blue ink”. But the most interesting one is AAX-013, which consists of “a maelstrom of wood, glass and metal mastered through the process of octillion grains of sand malevolently grinding across tape-heads, producing an immediate and relentless destruction of the listener’s equipment, eardrums and rational thinking”. In other words, a tape full of sand that completely wrecks the tape player you choose to use to “listen” to “it”. In terms of noise, this seems less like a surreal and offensive gimmick and more like the only logical extension of the music.

The nice thing about these recordings is they’re not expensive; most of the tapes are around six dollars; only the unspooled tape gets pricey at twenty-five, though with the amount of effort the idea took, it’s probably a fair price.

I find the whole idea of people returning to outdated forms of media distribution as response to modern advances to be fascinating. The whole vinyl movement is similar, though that’s already well-established and it’s hardly controversial for people to buy LPs. I’m amused by that, since the impression I get from my parents and other older people is that vinyl was horrible and unwieldy, and they never looked back after cassettes and especially CDs.

Digital has changed things because, within it, music is nothing. There is no physicality to it, no ownership. Digital songs files are worthless. You can download them, delete them, download them again, delete them again, and so on with no particular effect. I’ve ‘lost’ my digital music collection a few times already, and it never really feels like a loss. I can simply recover what I want and let the rest be lost to time. Often I lose memory of what the artist or album was even called, and even if I do remember, sometimes they are so obscure as to be unretrievable.

On the other hand, I can open my closet and find a battered (probably unplayable) copy of To The Faithful Departed, a copy that’s survived a few moves, has had plenty of time to disappear, and yet stays there, resillient. I can sit down and listen to these songs, which I haven’t really paid much attention to since around 1997, but they are not lost to me, and neither is the object itself. I’m not sure if it was my first CD; probably. It doesn’t have a booklet, but some sort of giant poster that you open up. The cover shows the band in a yellow room, but if you open the whole poster up the yellow room is in the middle of a forest. I would have to open this thing to get a peak at the lyrics, since my english listening wasn’t good enough to understand them properly.

There used to be an effort associated with finding music. Not that there isn’t anymore, but it’s considerably simpler. As a child, you didn’t really have disposable income. You didn’t really have access to many record stores. You didn’t really have options. You had to navigate through racks of shit records and see if something decent had been imported. If you had access to music communities, it wasn’t necessarily easy to enter them. Your ten-year-old self had to ask some quasi-cool record store clerk if he could get you a copy of X album, which no matter the album, was likely out of your league. The music itself could be less than great, but the process had a certain excitement.

With real independent music, these are real problems, issues that arise from the way the scenes work/worked. You have kids starting record labels run out of their bedroom, bands that barely lasted a few months releasing recordings done in 24 hours in someone’s basement, budgets that could allow a tour with incredible difficulty. These type of things became a badge of honor, partly because they merit some praise, partly because when you’re in shit conditions, you may as well convince yourself they’re actually good. The whole thing becomes a dare. You, as a listener, are dared to seek these bands, they are not going to be fed to you or come to you, you have to put some effort into getting involved, and then it becomes a little club.

Now, you may argue that  insular music communities have their problems, but is it worse than no community? I would think not, for as much as music itself is meaningful, everything that surrounds it has its own worth too. Your memories of music are often the memory of who you were listening with, who introduced you to, who you went to a concert with. You may also argue that these increasingly gimmicky tapes, or floppy discs, or whatever delivery method is used, don’t really build any meaningful sense of discovery or inclusion. But what I’d say is, in 5 years, you could find one of those hidden in a box you left on your basement, and even if you might not be able to play it immediately, it will bring back memories.

So I guess the question is, what will music communities and the industry evolve into? There is a spirit against simple digital consumption, so what shape will it take? Is it an actual phenomenon, or is it just the nostalgia of a bunch of twentysomethings who managed to buy CDs and tapes before the whole thing collapsed? It could just be that I’m getting old.

There’s an interesting article on Pitchfork about tapes and their recent ‘resurgence’ (rather, the piece argues that they never truly went away). The tape trend is not surprising: since the value of high quality recordings has decreased considerably (they are free anywhere online), listeners might look for something else, something that distinguishes the product from a traditional download. Tapes, with their hiss, warp, and technical limitations, seem like a more personal product than the decidedly impersonal mp3s of the day.

I have a lot of fond memories of tapes. They were my only real resource for music in the nineties. By the time CD-Rs became accessible, mp3s were already pushing out the CD, and Discmans were so impractical I never got a taste for them. I did love tapes though.

I had this radio-cassette player with a built-in mic. I’d place it in front of the television’s speakers and wait patiently for new songs to show up on MTV’s video programs, then record these songs. The tapes sounded absolutely terrible, but it was much better than nothing. Radio recordings sounded much better, though they always had snippets of dialogue either at the beginning or the end of the songs. The song selection was appalling. I’d also listen to tapes my dad recorded, especially when he lived out of town; he’d send tapes with music he thought I might like (which was mostly AOR; I’m not entirely sure why he thought I’d like that, but it’s not really all that important). I’d listen to all these tapes on a bulky Walkman I had which seemed to last decades and refused to die even after almost every button but PLAY worked. There was a certain charm to all of that, to the way songs sounded when they’d been recorded over ancient-looking gray tapes, the way the announcements from the radio station DJs could be heard on the songs and ended up becoming a part of them, my less than perfect attempts at replicating album covers by drawing them on paper and placing them on the tape box.

It’s not just the music itself that’s important, then, but our relationship to it. The amount of music that’s available for listeners these days is so vast that it’s not likely we’ll have a unique experience when listening to any given song or record. For example, I have very few memory associations of songs and artists with specific moments, nor do I have the memory of having heard a recording for the first time, simply because the vast majority of these moments were the same.

The last memory I have of a first listen is from late 2007. I was holed up in my studio, studying for a particularly brutal physiology exam, and I used my small break to listen to In Rainbows, which had just been released online that night following a sudden announcement from the band about a week before. It’s hard to believe that was two and a half years ago. It’s also funny, I suppose, since it was the first (and one of the few) memorable album releases without a physical product (Trent Reznor and Saul Williams would do the same in the next years). The experience was different from today’s CD experience, which is none at all: albums are leaked online weeks, sometimes months before their release, without much fanfare or anticipation. The albums might as well have materialized out of thin air. With In Rainbows, even though there was no physical album, there was a release date. It was not possible to ‘leak’ the album, and even if it had been possible, it would have seemed counterproductive since the band was offering it for free on their own website. It’s because of that date that the experience of sitting down and listening to In Rainbows with less than perfect laptop speakers is still in my memory: there was actual excitement and anticipation towards the date of release and the act of listening. It was all planned, not at all spontaneous.

I remember that the day after, everyone had heard the album. Unlike other albums, which people hear when they are able to afford them or when they find out about their existence, this one was (mostly) free and mostly anyone I knew who wanted to listen to it did so at the same time. It was a collective experience at a scale that’s hard to replicate.

Back to tapes. While tapes do capture some of the physicality and uniqueness of a recording, they have a clear problem which is accessibility. That problem renders the whole idea of tape culture as a complement to regular ways of distribution. It’s harder to track bands and artists if we have to purchase every record, that’s inevitable. Now, bands and artists could easily argue that they’re not making music for the entire world, and that’s certainly a good point. However, I doubt anyone gets angry or annoyed that music finds unexpected audiences. I might enjoy everything a band puts on tape, but there is no way I will have found out they exist through a tape.

I used to think very little of Vampire Weekend (both as musicians and as a general ‘idea’). Over time I’ve come to appreciate not only their music, but more importantly, the whole idea of Vampire Weekend. Which makes me wonder. The band had their breakthrough in 2008, and since then they’ve been the primary representative of that whole trend of boat shoes and shorts and assorted ’summer for people with money’ accessories. They project an image of money and status (of non-musical provenance), the antithesis to most bands. I suppose what I’m wondering is, if post-2008, post-financial-crisis, in the current reality of poor employment opportunities and crushed dreams for young people, a band portraying a financially comfortable life of leisure isn’t just the perfect fantasy for everyone.

Aside: Too much of what I write starts with “I”.

I’m not really fond of top lists of the year, mostly because for every single year, I’ve discovered my true favorite records of the year long after it’s passed, and long after the list is already ‘made’, and I guess it would be understandable if it were merely records that were ‘growers’, but it’s mostly new discoveries, so trying to come up with some sort of overview of a year that is certain to be hopelessly outdated just a few months later seems pointless. I suppose that’s a disclaimer: this is just what I listened to this year, and I don’t have any illusions that it’s not an embarassingly limited list, but at this point I’m happy with my comfort bands.

A few of my favorite songwriters released recordings this year, some with more success than others. Bill Callahan’s latest record was, at the very least, better than the last. I listened to his Smog records often this year, and though he’s in many ways a greater musician and composer these days, I can’t help but miss his darker streak and minimal epics. Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle is almost lush, which is not really what I expected at this point in the career of one of the most inwards-looking, isolated musicians I’ve heard. Cass McCombs’ Catacombs was surprisingly well-received, and I suppose it’s his most popular record by now. When I originally heard it, I found it disappointing. The best songs have grown on me, though it’s missing the edge of his previous works; it’s the docile McCombs, less idiosyncratic and a tad more sentimental. Will Oldham released an album that I enjoyed at the time, but can’t really say I’ve revisited too often.

The Mountain Goats released a new record, The Life Of The World To Come, which I’ve been unable to really enjoy on the first few listens, a pattern since 2006’s Get Lonely. There was a small window during which The Mountain Goats were my favorite band (mid 2006), but the albums they’ve released since them have been initially unsatisfying, and although I’ve grown to love some of the songs within, they haven’t really been up to par. I have two main issues with modern-era Mountain Goats. The first is John Darnielle’s singing, which is technically better, but less emotional; his yelps and screams are gone, his voice is less nasal (which I suppose is a plus for many people, but not for me), and he whispers, speaks softly, or uses a slight falsetto constantly. In my favorite records, he’d just sing-talk in his whiny voice, it worked, mostly because the lyrics fit the scrappy-underdog-singer style perfectly. It’s much harder to pull off an emotional singing voice over a piano, and he doesn’t quite succeed. The other problem I’ve had with these records, especially the last two, are the arrangements. I can’t quite describe what’s wrong with them. They often sound like they’re coming from a gaudy, low-budget Christian church band with a drummer that is like, really into UB40. When John Darnielle started recording more arranged songs and turning The Mountain Goats into a true band, it worked well, because his arrangements actually had the same rawness and vitality of his earlier, lo-fi work. These latest records just sound a little too good. The drumming in particular fits poorly; it sounds much too loud and expansive, which is just ridiculous for most of the songs. I don’t mean to pile on The Mountain Goats since there’s still a few great songs in every album, but it’s really baffling to me that they managed to avoid disaster when dropping their lo-fi style, only to start making those mistakes now.

Other records that were worth a few listens were: Sunset Rubdown – Dragonslayer, a record by a band I used to dislike. This time they kept it really tight and tidy, and the songs have a lot of manic energy. God Help The Girl – S/T, basically a Belle & Sebastian album, maybe better than the last one. The Flaming Lips – Embryonic, which is really long and repetitive and might be a hard swallow when whole, but has a lot of great songs in it and is a welcome change from a band that seemed really tired creatively.

As far as discoveries go, Lambchop was my biggest one this year. Kurt Wagner’s “band” had always been under the radar for me, which is strange since it’s more or less exactly the kind of band that I enjoy: focused on lyrics, deep vocally, unafraid of quiet moments. Wagner’s a terrific singer, and there’s a little quiver in his voice that adds emotion even to his most ridiculous lyrics. Unlike other songwriter bands, they’re actually able to perform energetic songs and move a crowd. Their Live At XX Merge recording was one of my favorite things this year, a really vital performance. As for records, they’re somewhat spotty, but Is A Woman definitely belongs to that pantheon of great, quiet albums from the 2000s, along with Master & Everyone, A River Ain’t Too Much To Love, and Heartbreaker.

Finally, Vic Chesnutt died a few days ago. I’d heard his name before and knew that Guy Picciotto was recording with him, but hadn’t heard anything. At The Cut, his latest album, is quite strong and a better use of the Mt. Zion band than the actual Silver Mt. Zion records, especially the opening track, which is simply brutal. There’s a tendency towards unmemorable arrangements, at least in the guitar, but the singing is quite powerful and generally rescues the songs when they meander. I feel like there’s something inappropriate about getting into an artist because of his death, but it happens. He was a very talented individual and it’s disappointing that things ended for him the way they did.

I remember that when Ryan Adams released the record Cold Roses (it might have been Jacksonville City Nights), he was asked why it was a double album, or why it was so long, something like that. Ryan’s answer was that he considered the albums like pizzas: you buy a pizza, you grab a slice or two, and you can eat the other slices later, if you want to. It’s a crude comparison, but it’s honest about the way we actually listen to music these days.

Cass McCombs has released a few solid records this decade. He’s a singer-songwriter with a style that’s hard to define. He’s juggled English indie-rock and folk influences with traditional American styles, and alternated between dense, distorted rock and delicate acoustic ballads. His lyrics are often praised; they were originally somewhat obtuse, complex and full of irony, humor, and unusual wordplay. Lately, though, he’s gone with more direct, down-to-earth approach, with clearer meaning and sentiment. His delivery alternates between delicate croon, overwrought falsetto, and sudden yelps; he has an affected style, to say the least. His new album, titled Catacombs, just came out. It is his fourth. It follows the lyrical path that began on his previous album, Dropping The Writ. The song arrangements, however, are more low-key. It is his most American record, with harmonicas and twangy guitars replacing the synthesizers of earlier records. There are 11 songs on the record, with little in the way of variety. The songs range from slow to really slow, the singing from reserved to really reserved.

The songs are rambling, repetitive and slow in form. The more elaborate arrangements are reminiscent of 60s popular American music. McCombs’ singing is reserved and restrained. His vocal ticks and falsetto histrionics are gone, for the most part. The range is much decreased, but it leads to interesting results. Earlier songs had suffered from a distancing effect. The layers of humor and slight genre subversion made those songs distinctive, but cold; when they dealt with less humorous emotions, the singing was so histrionic and excessive that it was hard to be comfortable around them. But that’s all mostly gone here. The songs aren’t warping their influences, they’re wearing them right on their sleeve, earnestly and completely seriously.

The problem is that the whole affair can get painful after a while. The arrangements are often too subtle and delicate to be discernible from each other. Played in one sitting, the record can be called, at best, boring. But does this really matter? I can list many problems with the album’s sequencing and flow, but it’s irrelevant seeing as I (as well as most other people who’ll ever listen to this, I presume) won’t actually be listening to this in one sitting and wondering what is wrong with the flow ever. The individual songs are rather strong; on their own, many of them feel more complete and well-rounded than those in McCombs’ previous work.

The three strongest numbers are the ones with the most detailed arrangements. The single “Dreams-Come-True Girl” highlights the album’s strong qualities: a steady, retro beat, direct lyrics, and small sonic details. Here, those details are Karen Black’s strange verse, and the background vocals near the end. “My Sister My Spouse”, another romantic number, features more of McCombs’ cleverness, and less of the variation; “Harmonia” is probably the most accomplished song, with the strongest and most lively rhythm section, beautiful guitar leads, and a melancholy mood. There is no distance, like in the earlier records; he sounds at his most vulnerable as he softly sings of the “Jersey river water”. It’s the song that’s most comfortable with the long lenghts, the steady unchanging rhythms, and the honesty and openness that the whole exhibits.

I can’t really say I’ve heard this record many times; I’ve heard its song repeatedly, but nothing about the sequencing or the variety is particularly appealing. I could judge the record based on that, but does it matter? I’m fairly sure most people are going to listen to its songs whichever way they choose to, so no, it doesn’t matter. Great songs.