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Your iPod is a Schitzo: Don't Trust it

Grayson Currin, columninst for Nashville Scene, wrote an insightful and higly readable review of O’Death’s third LP, Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin. What lifts this particular article from the doldrums in a sea of music reveiws is how Currin presents the album as a metaphor for the digital music age. At a time when so many writers can’t craft a single sentence without opeing thesaurus.com (::cough:: Insound ::cough::), a review like this is refreshing.

Currin’s central argument is that sourcing your sound from hundreds (Currin tosses out the "B" number) of influences does not guarantee your band will break any ground. In fact, it will most likely just make your album sound schitzophrenic.

From the article:
The band represents the label's eclectic aesthetic, then, to a world (minus the dwindling ranks of purists) that's realized through praxis that there's less room for genre strictures. This is the time where Hootie goes country, Nelly jams with Kenny Chesney, Lil Wayne plays guitar (or not) with Kid Rock. Or, as importantly, where you can have the complete discography of those four artists on your iPod before your next trip to the toilet. But as with O'Death, Kemado's variety doesn't translate necessarily into quality. The label sometimes seems to lack real oversight, releasing records in an opportunistic, hot-right-now fashion.


Read Grayson Currin's article in Nashville Scene.

Comments

Unknown said…
There's nothing wrong with reviewers spicing it up a little by playing the game "add the word of the day in the review". Today's word is Chawbacon, but I'll refrain from call you that just to get it in there.

Anyway, since I've not actually heard the album I'll assume what he's saying is true and it's not really that good, but isn't part of the appeal of mashups that schizophrenic sound of combining two top 40 hits?
Unknown said…
I read w/ interest this article about how iPod eclecticity can create mediocre music. Naturally taste is a subjective matter. I do find it unfortunate that he singles out O'Death as the punching bag for his theory. Bands/Musicians have been fusing together sounds/influences since time immemorial...hello Beatles ca. '63 w/ their odd (for the time) combination of Chuck Berry, Everly Brothers and Buck Owens. To single out this band when there are, in my opinion, FAR worse examples of your theory is strange. O'Death's alchemy works way better than he give them credit for. They have choruses which not only are rousing but stick. They have melodies that veer between minor key darkness and major key exuberance. They have a fiddle player who traffics as much of an influence from the Balkans as he does from Appalachia..and he can play his ass off. You have a band who has grown up on w/ power of punk, grunge and metal yet scrape away the superfuzz big muff overtones and are still are as powerful as a band w/ their guitarists going through Marshalls. Most of all their songs are hook-laden and addictive.
Anonymous said…
As a member of a household with hundreds of actual vinyl records and cd's as well as multiple computers and ipods with thousands of songs I find that i ascribe to Marshal Mcluhans theories about media. And completely agree with Jamie.


. In denver there are always reported " new garage" sounding bands that people tell us we should hear. But alas..they are all scattered in sound, mixing the worst of nirvana with the worst of black keys and leaving out the self aware hilarity of the Ramones..replaced with a copped late 90s self degradation.

how did that happen? i have a theory its because they listen to snippets. The stooges are are only the guitar lick from " i wanna be your dog" and Black Flag is only " six pack". They say they love ZZ TOP and Archers of Loaf, but i would dare them to admit if they ever sat down and really listened to Tejas all the way through.

BIG SECRET TO NON_BAND MEMBERS
Making music is easy, and another big secret is that WRITING music is even easier. Find a note, find a groove, scream or sing like some songs you like.
But it will never be good unless you tap into something primal. And the primal is built with drugs, frustration, passion, and DEEP LISTENING TO OTHER ARTISTS. Hell anyone can jog all day to Spoon. But you want to write real cool music to rival Spoons sweet groove?...Then listen to Can all day with some Femi Cudi on top for good measure.

Rock, hip-hop, folk..its all 3rd generation being ripped by the fourth. A simalcrum of copy copy. Auto pitchcorrected neo cool packaged as creativity. The pages keep coming out of the speakers, further and further smudged until the once blank white page of Americas great democratic experiment in peoples music for the masses becomes a inky soggy black pulp with no clear script left to inspire.

When the din of civilization becomes a roar of meaningless circular references, shut it all off. Choose an instrument. Play empty and be fucking honest with me for once...i swear ill buy your t-shirt.

D Zackary

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