That's My Dad.

Top 50 Songs of 2012: #37, The Flaming Lips - You, Man? Human??? (feat. Nick Cave)

You can touch me if you want! It’s obligatory, it’s allowed!

It’s not a surprise that the Flaming Lips/Nick Cave collaboration on the psychedelic assemblage “The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends” proved to be the weirdest moment out of the thirteen collaborations; playing out like a psychopathic clown killer trying to be friends with you while floating in space. It’s a match made in heaven for these eccentric sonic geniuses, one not to be missed by fans of experimental and space rock. 

(Source: Spotify)

Top 50 Songs of 2012: #47, The Maccabees - Pelican

Pharaoah, they’re not coming with you.

I fell in love with The Maccabees’ unique rock sensibilities early this year with the release of “Given to the Wild”, but always clung on to it like a terrifying guilty pleasure. With its math rock-esque qualities and stuttering lyrics, “Pelican” was the only moment I took no shame in parading my joviality for this group. While “Pelican” plays as a total digression from “Given to the Wild“‘s swoon-worthy alt-rock, its a moment more akin to adventurous artists Battles or The Vaccines.  

John Mayer - Born and Raised

The mere idea of John Mayer doing a country based album provokes gag reflexes. Alas, for old times sake, the acclaimed singer-songwriter owns enough fuel in his name to allow him for another go around.

After a tremendously banal 4th album, “Battle Studies”, an inescapably gossip mongering monster and a corrosive superstar ego shadowing Mayer’s tail, his time bomb of a career was inevitably destined for a blue screen crash. The results marks with Mayer exiling himself to middle-of-nowhere, Montana, hidden away from all the ‘oh so terrible’ aspects of modern life and rekindling with his long lost self. Cue the sympathy soundboard. From this self-induced separation were the seeds planted of an expected new album; an album that’ll be advertised as “intimate”, “raw” and “unprecedented”, as if these labels are expected to bewilder listeners into hopping on the hype train.

The fact of the matter is, any mainstream artist that isn’t walking propaganda or made more than two albums succumbs to the self-indulgent album; better known as the album “an artist makes for themselves”. And usually they suck. Sometimes it’s a last resort defense to veiling a poor album, or sometimes, it’s the truth. More often than so, these are the blemishes in a successful musician discography: they’re either shrugged off or the last nail in the coffin.

Here’s the thing with John Mayer. In the past eleven years since his debut “Room for Squares”, Mayer indulges in any non-offensive, radio-friendly genre and uses advanced musicianship technique as a cover. He takes major risks by relying strictly on music theory, letting his recklessly youthful personality run amok his music. In a sense, Mayer was mainstream rock’s Will Hunting throughout the ’00s.

Flash-forward to today on his fifth LP: “Born and Raised”, the ultimate foil to Mayer’s blueprint. Until now, Mayer got away with “being clever” with his lyrical substance, but now that overeager edge ended up consuming his personal image, he’s given up on his core appeal. Not to mention, in the process of Mayer cutting back and putting an album out there “for himself”, he let go of his nimble grip on music composition, sacrificing creativity with room for ingenuous, and unfortunately, tasteless, hopelessly insipid personal musings. 

It’s not even the added country-inspired instrumentation, which work in benefit for the album, but the dreadfully constructed lyricism. Mayer took after rapper Kanye West’s ambitious lyrical approach on “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” where the context of his personal life took center stage, offering theatrically massive emotional results. Unfortunately, Mayer bites the dust by spawning nearly every song-writing weakness in the book, only proving how Kanye’s challenging lyrical risks succeeded for his work. 

“Born and Raised” is an album that just cut Mayer’s tightrope in half. Not only does it place Mayer at his most vulnerable, creative-less and indulgent on his career map, but places him higher on people mainstream America wants to forget. It’s the nature of the game Mayer plays and making such a move even eliminates room for a second redemption. (4/10)

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The Flaming Lips - The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends

I spent $70 for a copy of “The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends”. This exclusive, diabolically demanded Record Store Day release on vinyl. I was enamored. This was the most expensive piece of music I’d ever bought. And at that point, I hadn’t even listened to it. 

The Flaming Lips are a group of psychedelic/noise/indie rock veterans who’ve done everything from cover Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” to — well you can’t really top that if you’re a psychedelic group. Through three decades of wildly ground-breaking and charming experimental rock music, it could be argued The Flaming Lips are this generation’s biggest and finest psychedelia voice. “The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends” is the group’s 14th album and, unabashedly, the collaborative album to invade every indie rocker’s wet dream. Musical guests include Ke$ha, Biz Markie, Bon Iver, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Yoko Ono, Neon Indian, Chris Martin of Coldplay and I’m only halfway through. 

There’s only one feasible way to define all thirteen sprawling tracks of the album. This is what it’d sound like if a dozen or so artists dropped acid and got trapped in a fun-house crawling with manic serial killers. With this in mind, “The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends” is conceptually hilarious. The Flaming Lips navigate each featured artist through the sheer sonic madness they’ve invented, then observing how they respond the high-voltage psychedelia. On the ear-splitting opener “2012 (You Must Be Upgraded)”, featuring Ke$ha and Biz Markie, it’s like The Flaming Lips created a room in their fun-house where daggers are being shot out of the walls and anything you touch will electrocute you to a morbid death; then we see Ke$ha, her drunken swagger and all, completely kick its ass and leaving the room without a scratch on her.

Each track here is really nervous. It’s part of what makes “Heady Fwends” such an enjoyable and exciting experience; these collaborations are built to satisfy and impress, not just a piece of novelty fodder that seemed great on paper but lack ambition in the studio. The Flaming Lips having a reputation of enforcing that too; working with such a group isn’t simple. They understand what their featured artists have to offer and then instruct them to keep up on the tightrope they tread on together. Tracks like “Ashes in the Air” with Bon Iver or “That Ain’t My Trip” featuring My Morning Jacket’s Jim James are something The Flaming Lips would put out anyways, but with the Midas touch of outside artists that make for something a new flavor of psychedelic noise rock. 

“The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends” is a loaded album, even for a steep $70, there isn’t a void left to be filled: my funds did not go to waste. The riveting level of color and detail seems like it spans galaxies within 70 minutes of run-time. It saddens me to think a mere 10,000 set of hands will be able to enjoy this gem on it’s original and intended format, but regardless of vinyl, “The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends” is a knock-your-socks-off LP ready to be loved by those ready for a fun-house on acid experience. 

This album was my dad. (10/10) 

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Young the Giant - Young the Giant

To be perfectly honest, I’m a little too young to be a full-fledged music snob. At my age (being that I am 17), there can sometimes be room for contrived rock music. Sure, it might only be good for background music or for your run-of-the-mill, adolescent “indie” soundtrack. And yes, no matter how hard you try, this record this devoid of any true personality. Yet, criticizing a band like Young the Giant would be the social equivalent of punching a stranger who compliments your outfit in the face. Young the Giant is a pleasant, straight-forward indie rock routine that doesn’t necessarily go outside the box, but resonates with an indulgent and theatrical level of emotion. Upon every listen, lead singer Sameer Gadhia charms us over with captivating hooks and choruses. I can’t despise Young the Giant for standing by its basic rock elements because the end result something like a box of Fruit Loops: bad for you, yet hopelessly enjoyable. (8/10)

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The 5 Albums that Changed My Life during 7 Days in New York City

1. A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory

Just being in the Bronx.

2. Jay-Z - The Blueprint

Sight-seeing in the Fashion District.

3. The Pharcyde - Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde

Being hip in lower Manhattan.

4. Young the Giant - Young the Giant 

Riding the subway, feeling part of something.

5. Charles Mingus - The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady

Walking alone in the nightlife. 

Radiohead’s OK Computer (A Companion Story for the Album)

(Airbag)

Wake up in the afterlife, in an environment beautifully composed by elements of familiar forces yet manipulated in styles you never thought possible. 

(Paranoid Android)

You’re lost, utterly helpless yet braver than your flesh and bones have ever made you feel. You aren’t supposed to be here. You don’t deserve to stay in the clouds. I deserve to rot on earth a little longer. You’re traumatically torn between these two worlds. Aggression, emotional pain and utter frustration fuels your brain right now. Suddenly, you encounter rage. You jump from the clouds and ferociously fall out from the sky, aiming for home. You’re falling, this is more real and visceral than anything imaginable. Somewhere in the fall, you give up on yourself. Nothing seems worth it anymore, there is zero inspiration to do anything ever again. You enter a state of mourning. Unfortunately, you’re home now.

(Subterranean Homesick Alien)

Everything in your house is brand new. There is a gorgeous gloss on every single item inside this place. The interior of this place must be worth millions. There is a brief yet overwhelming satisfaction that invigorates every pore in your body. You sit down to take all of this in, yet, you feel more isolated than you ever have before.  

(Exit Music (For a Film))

You can’t stay in your house anymore. This is not normal, I need to get out of here. Throw some essential belongings in the trunk of your sports car. Drive off to someplace else; someplace where I can find my sanity again. You’re speeding with no appreciation for the consequences of death, you realize the conundrum you’re in. I can’t die, I have no place to go, I am a ghost. You’re screaming at the empty road, drenched in sweat and tears, your face is burning by the salt. Your car veers off the road, flies off the hill and makes multiple flips before a picturesque crash and burn.  

(Let Down)

You’re out on a spectacularly vast and gorgeous open field, stretching for miles on almost all directions. You exit your car, which has been burnt to a crisp, drop to your knees and bawl your eyes out. Hopelessly lost and attacked by the beauty of such transcendental forces, you’re ready to die. 

(Karma Police)

Here comes the karma police. From an unseen horizon, they approach you. Without speaking a word, they analyze you with their eyes. Without a single regard left in your body, you don’t pay attention to them. There are four faceless men in suits. They bring out their batons and start beating you without a single twitch in their body. Like a bass drum filled with blood, every strike upon the body exploded with a lush red. As they chant, “This is what you get, when you mess with us,” the men carry your bloody body into the backseat of their car and travel off someplace else. You don’t know or care where the final destination is.

(Fitter Happier)

As you lay bleeding the back seat, the men put on earplugs and put something on the radio. It’s an automated voice of a man telling you how to leave to life your life from now on. You have no choice but to comply.

(Electioneering) 

Rage penetrates through your muscles and into your nerves. You jump out the car at 88 MPH and roll out onto the road, only adding to the collection of your bruises. Enough is enough. You run the other way from the car and it turns around and skids your way. You’re screaming, everything around you needs to melt away. I’m a subject in a painting. Erase this canvas and start over. 

(Climbing Up the Walls)

You trip and it seems like the car ran over you. Instead, you open your eyes, you’re at the bottom of a well. The opening beam of light is 200 meters above. There are spiders crawling from the perimeter inside to meet you. Thousands of spiders. Slowly, patiently, deviously crawling. You’re not panicked, for once. Their eyes start to glow. There is no hiding in the fact: they’re here to kill you. 

(No Surprises) 

You wake up. Have a glass of water. Go outside, it’s a gorgeous day. Take a walk. I think you might need it. You don’t look so well. Everything okay? 

(Lucky) 

Sitting in a coffee house, deeply concerned. Pondering what you just experienced: something of an out-of-body experience. A bell rings. Somebody’s entered the place. You’ve never seen this person before. They put a very long pistol to your temple and before you cut to black, you fear the black inside the barrel of his gun. Boom.

(The Tourist)

Wake up in the afterlife, in an environment beautifully composed by elements of familiar forces yet manipulated in styles you never thought possible. 

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I think OK Computer is a dream. It’s crafted in a surrealistic, investigative manner that puts a mirror right up to the face of human nature and shows it for all its horrifying and disturbing inner qualities. For me, it’s a sort-of bad dream that leaves you screaming when it departs, but a more distraught, haunted and internally perturbed universe that you don’t particularly want to leave. With this album, Radiohead not only stretched the capability of music, but also the limits of the human imagination. 

This album was my dad. (10/10)

The Maccabees’ Given to the Wild -

It’s disappointing to see a seasoned band like The Maccabees still unable to sound groundbreaking, resonating or particularly memorable. Nevertheless, their 3rd album, Given to the Wild, proves to be their most realized and fleshed out release to date. There is no doubt Given to the Wild is their masterpiece and has the chops to become what The Suburbs were for Arcade Fire. Gorgeously detailed with shimmering guitars that’d please Explosions in the Sky, arena-sized jams better than Coldplay’s X&Y, mature vocals not unlike Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and lush sounds drenched with atmosphere that, as mentioned, par up to Arcade Fire. I can bet you this release will go seriously under the radar, but Given to the Wild is a highly recommendable straight-up indie rock LP, no holds barred. (9/10)

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I blame Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen for Coldplay’s haters.

Save your spite for someone else; Coldplay is our generation’s U2. Where U2 evolved from albums like War, a powerful work of art representing the world’s society from the dawn of the 80’s, Coldplay begun from their emotionally triumphant album Parachutes and their rock masterpiece A Rush of Blood to the Head. On their 5th album, Mylo Xyloto, Coldplay has allowed zero room for scrutiny and have produced a dauntingly colorful and tight record, delivered with the same meticulous musicianship that makes a Coldplay release what it is.

To me, Chris Martin must have been a historian and a storyteller for kids in a past lifetime. After Parachutes, each release from Coldplay takes on this really specific mood from the future. With X&Y, there was this idea of a self-reflective, morose near future for all of us. With Viva la Vida, we see classical styles clash with futuristic ones and how, as musicians, Coldplay idolized lost generations from the 1800’s and appreciated them in a post-modern setting. In Mylo Xyloto, we’re drowned into a surrealist Alice in Wonderland-esque fantasy future to hide ourselves away from our problems. It’s almost as if Coldplay addresses American society’s sub-conscious desires and aims to fulfill them. They know when to make music for people to deal with their own fears with the world and when to give something to personally ponder over and relate to. In this sense, Coldplay is very much a pop artist. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Mylo Xyloto is one of 2011’s finest albums. I sincerely will not be personally attached to it, but I expect Coldplay fans to be. It’s a gorgeously produced album with more ambition than anything out of the pop or rock industry in quite a while.

This album was my mom. (9/10)