James Vincent McMorrow - Early in the Morning

When I got really inspired at the beginning of the year and thought I might get really going writing about music again, I was really blown away by a couple of albums. And now that I'm not looking so hard for new music, it's become increasingly rare for me to come across something that I feel like is really worth sharing. Also, I'm feeling more and more like it's not really worth the time to type out a review that sounds something like "meh, pretty good... I guess". That, and the Beiber fever I've caught is severely influencing my taste in music.

Having said all that and based on the title of the post, you may have guessed that Irish singer/songwriter James Vincent McMorrow's Early in the Morning has really jumped out at me. Despite sounding a striking amount like John Mayer on a couple of tracks (meaning, if I ever hear anything he does on the radio I'll immediately delete this post and deny ever endorsing this album), McMorrow does a fine job of straddling the line between emotive and melodic without getting overly schmaltzy (with the exception of the John Mayeresque stretches). At his most melodic and commercial McMorrow sounds like some type of Mayer/Bon Iver/Ray LaMontagne hybrid e.g. "If I Had A Boat" and on "We Don't Eat".

As the album progresses, McMorrow morphs into more of a Bon Iver/one man Fleet Foxes sort of routine... and the switch is sort of remarkable. To the outside observer (me, for example), it almost appears as though there was some type of intervention where somebody convinced him to make the record more marketable and wrote a few hooks for him, or showed him the list of a-listers John Mayer slept with. If you've decided your anti-John Mayer -- and it's not a ton of John Mayer -- then you'll want to start downloading on iTunes at "This Old Dark Machine".

Either way, a great album that's well worth listening to.

Let's Book Club!: The Art of a Beautiful Game by Chris Ballard

Chris Ballard's The Art of a Beautiful Game is subtitled The Thinking Fan's Tour of the NBA, which in my estimation, is a slightly misleading title. At once the book seeks to detail the nuance of a variety of different parts of the game: Kobe's killer instinct, Steve Nash's passing, shooting with Steve Kerr. However, the book only touches on these subjects in broad, general terms. In essence, it's a "thinking fans" guide to the NBA... if the fan only has a grammar school education.

The chapters, each of which tackles a different aspect of the game, tend to follow this formula: introduction to the subject, a reader's digest background on the subject, a bunch of quotes from other people about the person and subject, summary of chapter/thoughts on the future of the aspect of the game.

My biggest gripe with the book is that it appears the book was written based solely off interviews and personal anecdotes. Now, there's certainly nothing wrong with that, and that's the way that the majority of sports journalism is done, and that works well the two column articles that show up in the local sports pages. But, to qualify as something for a "thinking fan" there has to be some degree of, a) background knowledge of the literature in that area; and b) original research. Even for a mass market book I'd settle for a summary of new original research (see Gladwell, Malcolm), but, unfortunately, Ballard manages to cite exactly one book through the entire 200 pages.

So, my recommendation would be that if you are familiar with things like PER, true shooting percentage, a pinch post, then this might be a book to pass on... you're not going to get anything new. On the other hand, it is a well written book with some fun anecdotes, so if you're not planning on attending the Sloan Conference at MIT (or have no idea what I'm talking about), then it may be a fun little read.

Grade: C

Up next: After how easy I found this one, I think I'm going to head back to A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

2011 Book Club Results

1. Into the Wild | John Krakauer (207 pages) | B-

2. Dance Dance Dance| Haruki Murakami (393 pages)| A-

3. The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History| Free Darko (not applicable)|A

4. The Art of a Beautiful Game| Chris Ballard (228 pages)| C

When the Devil's Loose by A.A. Bondy

Not breaking news, really. But a really great album that ought to be heard.

I can't exactly remember when I first heard of A.A. Bondy. It might've been on Friday Night Lights or possibly through a friend via Facebook, but in either case I do remember be utterly mesmerized by his sound. The strange thing about this hold he has on the listener (in this case, me) and the way he's able to captivate, is that he doesn't possess any of the tools that would immediately wow you. He has a nice voice, but it certainly doesn't over power. His songs are simple and straight forward -- he's not producing anything approaching a Sufjan Stevenseque opus, and yet, I'm hard pressed to think of an artist I've come across in the past year that I've been affected more by.

On his 2009 release When the Devil's Loose Bondy sings like a man who is tired. While there's nothing that particularly stands out about Bondy's music, he emotes, and his fatigue is so tangible that it's hard not to slow down with him. Given Bondy's background, the world weary and fatigued sound seems entirely appropriate. According to wikipedia, from 1994 - 2003 "Scott" Bondy was the lead singer of a grunge rock band called Verbena housed on Capitol Records. After viewing a couple of their music videos on youtube, namely, "My Baby Got Shot", I was exhausted.

For many song-writers this might drive them to begin to write some horribly self-absorbed and self-pitying type work, but this is something that When the Devil's Loose is very clear to avoid. The songs are slow and wistful, but the stories seem to serve as more of a cautionary tale rather than a source of out and out regret, though it certainly possible that what sounds like regret to me is actually just a southern, Mississippi Delta sort of thing.

Let's Book Club!: Free Darko Presents The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History

In his book What is History E.H. Carr distinguishes between "facts of the past" and "historical fact" arguing that, if I remember correctly, "facts of the past" are forgotten and "historical facts" are what historians have collectively deemed important. Therefore, the thesis from Carr is that history is constructed by those that write it, meaning the stories of the marginalized are often under represented or not represented at all. In Carr's view, history isn't an accumulation of facts, history is about how stories are framed into a coherent narrative.

In the The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History, the Free Darko collective have taken the grand narratives of basketball history and have deconstructed NBA history beyond just dates and facts. For those not familiar with the Free Darko, their writing is highly literate often drawing on references from the classics to current, and often obscure, pop-culture references. If basketball is an art form, as its oft described, then the latest collection of short essays from Free Darko is art-history. The magic of all this is that they do this without sounding arrogant or pretentious, and they do it in a way that captures the characters in basketball.

While having the appearance of a coffee table book akin to Jon Stewart's America: The Book, the writing is much more than reader's digest clips of the past. Stylistically, the book is stunning, with some graphics that will knock your socks off, but the prose in the The Undisputed Guide is what makes the guys at Free Darko some of the most interesting writing in basketball today.

At the beginning, the pre-history of basketball from Naismith to the beginning of the ABA does read a little like a history text, but without any real source material there really wasn't any room to do what Free Darko does. And what they do, is pick the untold swag out of the history of professional basketball -- they tell the stories that are untold in the popular myths about professional basketball, and they cast a new light on the stories that we do know -- the similarities between Wilt/Russell and the fun of the Duncan/Popovich San Antonio Spurs, for example. While wins and losses are significant, to Free Darko, they are only as significant as the way they make us feel about the dynamics, style, and players on the team.

Most interestingly, the authors examine how the giants of the game Russell and Jordan, impact how we look at mere mortals like Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Oscar Robertson; and Barkley and Malone. They look at the eclectic early 70s New York Knicks (future Senator Bill Bradley, Phil Jackson, Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, etc.), the similarities between Kareem and Bill Walton, how the 1984 draft (Olajuwon, Jordan, Barkley) transformed the draft from business transaction into spectacle, and the beauty of AI's individual approach to playing a team game. In each section of the book the writers of Free Darko are able to find the art/style/meaning in their subjects (yes, even the Duncan/Popovich San Antonio Spurs).

The real morale from The Undisputed Guide is that, there's meaning to the game beyond championships and popular myths of heroism, that often, the narratives that go untold are equally meaningful.

Grade: A

Upnext: I'm reading Dave Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which I'm Foster Wallacianly dense, so I'll probably mix that in with Chris Ballard's Art of a Beautiful Game. I'm expecting the Eggers book to take a little so expect thoughts on the Ballard book next...

2011 Book Club Results

1. Into the Wild | John Krakauer (207 pages) | B-

2. Dance Dance Dance| Haruki Murakami (393 pages)| A-

3. The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History| Free Darko (not applicable)|A

Destroyer - Kaputt

I put on Destroyer's newest release in the car the other day, left the volume on low, and promptly forgot about the album. The next day I went out to go pick my sister up at the airport, I wondered how Liz had got a muzak installed in our car over night without me knowing (joke!). But seriously, from the outset of this album it sounds like Dan Bejar has channeled his inner-Will-Ferrel-Yazz-Flute, or was contracted to write the score for a teen drama circa 1985 and then decided to write lyrics over the music.

The bizarre part of all this, gentle ribbing aside, is that it absolutely works and this album is certainly a front runner for album of the year. Yes, it's early, but Kaputt is absolutely stellar.

Bejar's songs have always been my favourites off all of the New Pornographers albums, but I've felt like that's mostly because he's been restrained by Carl Newman's pop-sensibility. Most often (with the exception of Destroyer's Rubies and "An Actor's Revenge") his music has gone over my head. I've thought, he's an interesting lyricist, he's got an interesting cadence to his voice, but... meh. Maybe it's just that I'm too low brow and need at least some semblance of a hook or chorus in my songs.

I'm convinced that at least half my adoration for this album comes from the fact that it's a light, breezy, sort of album which is perfect for the weather here in Durham, NC today: shorts, flip flops, and windows down in the car. The other part, I think, is that the album draws you in with a really easy, steady rhythm at the beginning. The light snare (?), the synth noises, seem like the perfect fit for Bejar to wander with his often bizarre and cryptic lyrics.

That steady rhythm seems to permeate through the entire album, and that rhythm gives Bejar the leeway to freelance. And the album has that feel to it, fresh, almost like it's unscripted. Like the way that I imagine great jazz comes together -- where the drummer starts off with a beat, and then the other musicians come in and layer on top of each other. The last layer being Bejar, who's vocals sound like half lounge singer and half poet.

The moral of the story is, give it a chance. I always find that these types of albums, the ones that sound like they're going to be terrible -- either by their description, or by your first impression of the first few notes -- are often the ones you become the most attached to. I'm attached to this one.

... at least the first minute and a half of the video is worth watching even if you want nothing to do with the album... eat your heart out Napoleon Dynamite...

Let's Book Club!: Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami

I'm not sure whether I have anything really earth shattering to say about Haruki Murakami's Dance Dance Dance. The book is another solid addition in Murakami's rather impressive collection. It doesn't move the reader (me) on the same scale that Kafka on the Shore or Norwegian Wood did, and it's not an epic story like The Wind-Up Bird Cronicle (which may well be one of my favourite works of fiction of all time), but it's good.

After looking at Murakami's bookography, Dance Dance Dance falls right after Norwegian Wood a novel which garnered him much unwanted fame in his native Japan. NW was a more prototypical novel, without the strange surreal elements that often makes Murakami's work so different, and DDD seems to be a return to the strange.

The more I think about it, the more I think I actually really enjoyed Dance Dance Dance. I did, after all, read the entire book in 4 days. But, it's probably not the book I'd recommend first to people who haven't read anything by the Japanese super-star author... I'd check out the other ones I mentioned above first.

Grade: A-

Up next: Probably Chris Ballard's The Art of a Beautiful Game... I ordered approximately 100 basketball books from Amazon, so, it's going to be a lot of that in the next while. That said, I'm pretty keen on reading Murakami's memoirs What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

2011 Book Club Results

1. Into the Wild | John Krakauer (207 pages) | B-

2. Dance Dance Dance| Haruki Murakami (393 pages)| A-

My Favourite 5 Springsteen Videos/Songs

So, I feel like I might not have clearly communicated my love for all the things Springsteen in my last post, entitled "I'm in love with the Gaslight Anthem", or whatever. At any rate, The Boss is one of my all-time, all-time, favourites and since I've been singing "Hungry Heart" to myself for the last 3 days straight, I thought this post might be a way to right myself with the music gods.

Having said that, all that stuff I said about him pandering to the working man is so absolutely, unabashedly true. His attire in the videos are, in order: plaid shirt, sleeves cut off; suit jacket and button up shirt; plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up; coveralls; plain white t-shirt, jeans. So, basically, in three of the five videos he looks like he's just been working on his car in the driveway, one he was actually working on a car, and in the other he looks like a professional musician. And, hilariously, in "Glory Days" which just missed the cut, the video opens with the Boss on a construction site running some enormous super drill... I'm just saying...

After spending the morning watching these videos, the contrast between the Springsteen videos from the 80s and everything that's being done now is really striking. Most of the videos are done in long form, there's a surprising amount of non-song dialogue, there are almost 'scenes', and you almost feel like Springsteen is trying to sell you on his songs. Not in a sleezy way, but in a I really like my music and you should too, sorta way.

In contrast, today, music videos basically don't exist and Much Music and MTV have evolved (or devolved, depending on your point of view) into places for reality shows about rich drug addicted teen mothers celebrating their 16th birthday (or something). But the videos that are being made are either larger than life productions that are symbols of how successful the artist is, or aspires to be (basically every pop/rap/rnb video); or more subversive videos by smaller bands which are deliberate attempts to demonstrate how they don't need an expensive video to enjoy making music (think OK Go).

Frankly, I'd take anyone of these Springsteen videos over 99.9% of the actual music videos being produced today. They're simple, straightforward, and just about the Boss selling his tunes. No agent, no building a brand or crafting an image. If smell what the R.O.B. is cooking, you should check out videos by Colin Medley, Southern Souls, LaundroMatinee, and, of course, the grandfather of these sorts of videos, La Blogotheque all of which are more or less in the grand tradition of... 80s music videos... weak ending...

5. "Born to Run" Born to Run

4. "The River" The River

3. "Hungry Heart" The River

2. "I'm on Fire" Born in the USA

1. "Dancing in the Dark" Born in the USA

... great song... it's my favourite because it's given me my signature wedding dance move: the underbite-shimmy-snap. Also, is that the chick from Cougartown?

The Gaslight Anthem - American Slang

Not sure whether this blogging thing is going to take again, but what the hell...

On a recent Bill Simmons podcast w/ Adam Carolla they did this bit about Bruce Springsteen and how his music was so overtly, unabashedly, middle-class. They went on about his newest (and most made-up release) Factory about the factory that makes the factories was shutting down... a little over the top... but right on point. The gag being that the Boss would do whatever he could to connect with blue collar middle America. While I don't think his motives are quite as suspect as Simmons and Carolla joked that they were, Springsteen's middle class nostalgia, seems disconnected in the post-internet age. Suffice to say the Boss hasn't been middle class in, say, three decades, so what's he really got to say about losing your job at the steel mill.

I bring this up because my first exposure to The Gaslight Anthem taps into this blue collar theyreshuttingdownthefactorythatmakesthefactories vibe that Springsteen made famous on Born to Run and Born in the U.S.A. Beyond the obvious comparison between the gruff rock voice of lead singer Brian Fallon and Springsteen, both parties seem to capture the anger/confusion/longing for something simpler, of their respective generations.

I think what makes the connection between Fallon and the GLA and Springsteen interesting is how, simultaneously, they are so similar and so different. Both the GLA and Springsteen speak the same NJ blue collar language of the working man, but the more than 30 year gap between the emergence of the GLA and Springsteen is indicative of how that language and how that sub-section of blue collar steel belt America has changed.

In Springsteen's era the group was more populous, starting to wane, but hanging on. As such, the Boss' music seems longing, but hopeful and the edges of his music are softer, more palatable, and somehow seem less important. Maybe this has to do with The Boss as a rock icon or our/my familiarity with his songs, but in comparison American Slang, doesn't quite have the same sense of urgency, or meaning, or personal importance.

For example, when most people (and I've had this argument several times) that most people think "Born in the U.S.A." is a pro-America song, and while the lyrics are decidedly not, the melody might as well be the new American national anthem. In 2011, Springsteen's music feels as though it should be in a commercial for the newest Chevy Pickup Truck.

In contrast, American Slang (the album) and "American Slang" (the song) feels as though without a bigger audience to connect to, that they can speak for downtrodden in New Jersey. American Slang feels as though it's the sound track for the guys who didn't finish high school, and are going to have a tough time of it in a knowledge based economy where manufacturing work doesn't exist in America. Where Springsteen feels like he's selling pickup trucks, the GLA is the soundtrack for the Dicky Eklunds of the world.

None of this is to say that the GLA is better than Springsteen. Springsteen is, IMHO, one of the greatest rock 'n' rollers of all time, and without the Boss, there is no Gaslight Anthem. What I am saying is that the Gaslight Anthem has taken the torch, and from now on they're be speaking for NJ.

"American Slang (acoustic)"

The Gaslight Anthem w/ Bruce Springsteen "The '59 Sound"