Recently I've been hearing a lot of buzz about Spotify, the new in the cloud streaming music service.
The Good:
- High Audio Quality Streams
- Fast Streaming
- Pretty Good Selection
The Bad:
- the Queue / playlist
I'm talking about the general queue / playlist and not about making a playlist. This feature kind of drives me crazy. I hate how it won't just go through the list in order, it takes whatever song you just finished and adds it to the end of the queue. I feel this is completely unnecessary. When I go back to check my list after listening for a while, everything is all out of order. Also, I don't like how if you play something it doesn't automatically add it to the queue (like Grooveshark) unless you ask it to.
Multiple Tabs / User Interface:
If I search for something, and then tab over to another page, my search results are gone.. you either have to re-search or hit back. I also don't like having to go to a different page to see the playlist / queue. It would be much better if the playlist was across the bottom like Grooveshark or another pane on the side like for the playlist like Winamp / Windows Media Player. Basically I want to see the playlist at all times. There's really no reason not to have everything on the same page, there is so much space.
Artist / Song Selection:
Spotify seems to be just about as good as Grooveshark in terms of finding artists. It is seemingly better at finding more official releases. It finds some artists GS doesn't have but it's missing others the GS does have. It's missing a lot of artists in the electronic genre, and quite a few others from my playlists. But it balances it out by finding other rare artists, like Sophie Madeleine and her new record.
I do like how they organize stuff when you click on an artist, showing you all the albums and artwork and bio etc. That's better than GS.
It's missing weird stuff here and there. Like for Nirvana there is one artist page that has everything except Bleach... then another entirely different page that only has Bleach. Radiohead has a lot of bsides available... but no In Rainbows. A lot of Korn's stuff is there... but few bsides etc. Some artist pages get strange as well. Take Hum for example. Apparently there are several artists named Hum, and there's no distinction about who is who.
Having to D/L an Actual Program.
I think I see why they want to have an actual program available... but with their resources I don't see why they couldn't just make something that is completely browser based.
SUMMARY
Overall, I think it's a pretty decent service and a good competitor to Grooveshark. What would really seal the deal for a user like me though, is getting away from the Itunes Interface (I've always hated itunes). Fixing the user interface issues above... and really being able to offer me EVERY official release under the sun. If they could track down and organize all of a band's official albums, singles, bsides and compilations in one location in high quality. This would be ideal.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Top Favorite Songs of 2009
Here's my playlist of songs that made me actually feel something in 2009.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
On the Popularity of the Whiny Emo Vocal Style
Today I was thinking about the whiny high pitched emo vocal style and how disproportionate the ratio of how much I hate is to how popular it became. I was trying to do some research into where it came from and why so many people just accepted it as the de facto way you're supposed to sing.... when luckily, I found this article that did most of the work for me.
http://www.spin.com/articles/whine-times
I've never been able to get into this vocal style. The farthest I can go is Cedric Bixler-Zavala from Mars Volta or Tom Delonge from Blink 182. I guess I can tolerate high, and I can tolerate nasally.. but I can't tolerate whiny. It's always stood out to me from the beginning as being a bit odd. I remember things slowly going downhill after blink 182 became popular in the early 2000's. Slowly, it seemed like every pop punk band that came out was a little bit more nasally, a little bit higher pitched, a little bit more whiny. It started to bother me at New Found Glory... but I knew something was wrong when I first heard A Simple Plan. "Ok", I thought. "This vocal style is just an extreme version of Tom Delonge, surely they will be relagated to the margins of this genre where they belong, this will just be a one off thing." Little did I know it was going to get worse. Much worse.
After I got to college in 2003 or so... whiny was in. Cartel, Yellowcard, Hawthorne Heights, All American Rejects, Story of the Year, the Used, Taking Back Sunday. At first I thought it was just trendy but it just kept going. What really didn't make sense to me was how little reaction there was against it. I pointed it out one day to some people... "hey, what's with all these whiny high pitch vocals lately?" and people would just stare at me funny. As if they couldn't hear it. As if that was the way it had always been. I knew it was really bad when I would see frat guys listening to it. That really blew my mind. Those are supposed to be the most macho douche guys right? And here they were listening to the cutest, innocent high pitched boy vocals on the planet, that was often pretty flamingly homosexual sounding as well. Weren't they supposed to be beating up kids that listened to this music? It made no sense. I still wonder why today it's not listed as part of the "gay agenda" that's out there to poison our youth.
The article linked above actually interviews many bands that have this style, and you get to see what their thoughts are on it, and attempts to summarize a bit of how it became a part of the cultural zeitgeist of the 2000's. Here are some highlights...
http://www.spin.com/articles/whine-times
I've never been able to get into this vocal style. The farthest I can go is Cedric Bixler-Zavala from Mars Volta or Tom Delonge from Blink 182. I guess I can tolerate high, and I can tolerate nasally.. but I can't tolerate whiny. It's always stood out to me from the beginning as being a bit odd. I remember things slowly going downhill after blink 182 became popular in the early 2000's. Slowly, it seemed like every pop punk band that came out was a little bit more nasally, a little bit higher pitched, a little bit more whiny. It started to bother me at New Found Glory... but I knew something was wrong when I first heard A Simple Plan. "Ok", I thought. "This vocal style is just an extreme version of Tom Delonge, surely they will be relagated to the margins of this genre where they belong, this will just be a one off thing." Little did I know it was going to get worse. Much worse.
After I got to college in 2003 or so... whiny was in. Cartel, Yellowcard, Hawthorne Heights, All American Rejects, Story of the Year, the Used, Taking Back Sunday. At first I thought it was just trendy but it just kept going. What really didn't make sense to me was how little reaction there was against it. I pointed it out one day to some people... "hey, what's with all these whiny high pitch vocals lately?" and people would just stare at me funny. As if they couldn't hear it. As if that was the way it had always been. I knew it was really bad when I would see frat guys listening to it. That really blew my mind. Those are supposed to be the most macho douche guys right? And here they were listening to the cutest, innocent high pitched boy vocals on the planet, that was often pretty flamingly homosexual sounding as well. Weren't they supposed to be beating up kids that listened to this music? It made no sense. I still wonder why today it's not listed as part of the "gay agenda" that's out there to poison our youth.
The article linked above actually interviews many bands that have this style, and you get to see what their thoughts are on it, and attempts to summarize a bit of how it became a part of the cultural zeitgeist of the 2000's. Here are some highlights...
- rejection of overly masculine vocal styling of the 90 alt rock and metal (and although not mentioned probly nu metal as well)
- continuation of the punk DIY, where people who aren't classically trained should try to make their own music.
- high pitched = more emotional / more tense - which fits in well with the point of emo... taking emotions to the extreme
- appeals to teen girls/ teenage emotions
- is a natural range for many men, but has not been explored very often in the past
Monday, May 24, 2010
Deftones Diamond Eyes Album Review:
I've listened to the new Deftones album Diamond Eyes a few times now and I can honestly say I don't really like it very much. So far many reviews and comments are overwhelmingly positive, but I really don't feel that it is that well deserved and here's why.
MELODY:
The Deftones have always had two sides to them. On the one hand they appeal people who love heavy riffage and screaming vocals. And others who like the dream dream pop vocals and strange ambience. I've always been a fan of the songs that dream pop vocals and bizarre moods than just the ones that seem to be mostly just about heavy riffs. I'd rather have both at the same time though, but they don't seem to always combine them very well. My favorites are songs like Change In the House of Flies, My Own Summer, Minerva, Be Quiet and Drive, Back To School (Mini Maggit), Pink Maggit, Digital Bath, Hexagram, and Anniversary of An Uninteresting Event. This album certainly has lots of melody, and the screaming takes a back seat, which is fine by me. But this record Chino's melodies are all over the place. The melodies feel convoluted and unsure of what they want to do.
Chino loves to jump out of key and into strange areas which has worked very well on other albums. But on this album it seems like it's a crutch. It as if when he's just about onto to a good hook he goes and jumps off in a weird direction killing it. It reminds me a lot of George Harrison whom I felt had the same problem. An example of this would be his song "Beware of Darkness". While the jumps out of key are certainly interesting they just feel like they don't always serve the song. It kind of gives the impression he was trying to cram melodies over guitar parts, perhaps instead of changing the guitar parts to fit the vocals.
These odd melodic shifts are often typical of dream pop, but for an example of something that works better... listen to "Only Shallow" by My Bloody valentine (an influence of Chino's by the way). The verses keep popping out of key and have weird shifts, but it all works together and becomes part of why the song is interesting.
But when the Deftones do it on this record, it comes across forced and doesn't serve the song. It also comes across as half baked, like the ideas he came up for the melodies where still rough drafts and that he was going to go back and finish them later. I have read that the band will often come up with the music first and then Chino will come in separately to put vocals in over it once it's done. This always seemed like a silly idea to me to write an entire song without the vocals present at all to help shape the song, when they are such an important part of the songs. What if he can't think of anything good over the riffs? Are they just gonna keep it anyways? There's no checks and balances there for the Vocals and accompaniment. I wonder if this has happened here.
RHYTHM:
Drums
The drums on this album are fairly typical for Deftones songs, they usually play a supporting role and usually never jump out at me and make me say "wow that's a sick drum part". They do play a role in creating a sonic texture for the band, and the drummer definitely has a signature style. He has a more reggae / ska sounding kit, much like 311. On this record I feel like the drums are doing their job, but nothing much more beyond that, which usually isn't a problem in their better songs. On this record it's like if the guitars or the vocals aren't doing something interesting, the drums might as well be. It feels a lot more apparent that the drums aren't doing that much when everything else is less interesting on top of them.
Bass
The bass also plays the supportive role in the Deftones. Mainly just following the guitar, but having it's moments here and there on certain songs to stand out. But the same thing kind of goes for bass as I said about the drums. If the guitar is just gonna be boring, the bass might as well not follow it and do something more interesting.
Rhythm Guitar
As for rhythm guitar riffs, I have to set the bar at My Own Summer. If I set the bar for rhythm guitar at that, they fall well below it on this record. A riff like that is very unique and very catchy at the same time. But really most of their records don't live up to that so I won't make that big of a deal out of it.
The riffs are meaner than the last few records, but kinda stock for metal riffs in general and not really anything that unique that you'd want to write home about. And that's fine if they are in a supporting role, supporting something more catchy and important. But a lot of the songs give the impression that the guitars are supposed to be more of a central focus. I will give them props though for setting a more menacing atmosphere during many of the verses which I like. Really the verses are where the guitar shines through on this record. Things work well on the verses of songs like Diamond Eyes, and rocket skates. CMND / CNTRL has one of the best riffs in it's chorus on the record.
HARMONY:
Guitar
While the verses the guitar is doing it's job well, in the choruses either the vocals need to change to support the guitars more or the guitars need to support the vocals more. It often seems like they are each doing their own thing. The harmony definitely doesn't feel in the pocket enough on the choruses. A good example of this is CMND/CNTRL. That riff during the chorus is very interesting, but Chino throws a mediocre drifting melody over it and we're left with something where the melody doesn't help bring out the best in the riff and riff doesn't bring out the best in the guitar.
Keyboards
There are keyboards all over this record and they are actually pretty creative, when you can hear them. They aren't creative in an overt sense but more of a subtle sense. They pretty much totally support the guitar and fill out areas you don't realize are there till after you listen a few times. Then you suddenly realize
he's doing all this different stuff and using all these different sounds. I really don't understand how he's able to do so many different things yet also remain so subtle. It would be nicer if he was more in the forefront though.
TEXTURE:
The texture of this record remains fairly consistent throughout, only really breaking to do Prince and Sextape. Texture doesn't feel like an especially important element for this record. There's no real other textures beside the standard drum / bass / guitar / vocal setup. The keyboards are there but they sit inside the guitar and vocals so perfectly and the way they are mixed makes them feel as if they are barely
there. There are a few sparse electronic elements here and there but it's very subtle. It's not a very big issue for me, but it would be nice to have more variation to break things up and enhance the mood.
ALBUM COHESIVENESS:
The record feels very cohesive, but this works against it. Many of the songs seem like they are following a similar formula and feels too homogenized. There's no real stand out hits. There isn't much in the way of dynamics within the themselves and listening to the whole record it's one song after the other that sounds very similar. You don't get big shifts in the style of songs like how White Pony has Back to School, Teenager, Digital Bath, Change In the House of Flies. That record is able to remain diverse, yet the songs still feel like they belong together on a record. One thing that becomes very apparent is that there is a lack of "heavy" choruses, and here I will define heavy as sounding mean, aggressive, angry, and / or threatening. Many of the verses have a threatening vibe while all the choruses lift into a positive /spiritual / religiosy / dream pop vibe. This type of chorus is great for songs like Minerva, but here it doesn't often feel right, especially when almost every single song has this same formula. For some songs it
definitely kills the vibe, instead of taking you on an interesting detour. Many of the choruses don't really serve the song, and they seem like they were just thrown in there to take up space. Often they come across as watered down and half baked. It has been a trend for many bands of late, to write simple happy choruses with heavier verses (as apposed to the 90's lighter verse and heavy mean chorus) and I don't quite get why you wouldn't want a mean chorus. It's something I don't like about this record. I would like to give props for the cover artwork. I feel like it captures the mood of the title track in the image very well.
LYRICS:
The lyrics on this record are okay. Chino said he wanted to return to "painting pictures" and being more abstract than doing the typical nu metal thing where he's writing about how much he hates his abstract personal demons. But he hasn't really done the outward hatred thing very much since Around the Fur. In fact their last record kind of did the abstract painting pictures thing a lot more and it was more poetic.
On their first two records the lyrics were abstract and vague but they were much more about directing aggression outward at problems or people. During Around the Fur he started his trend combining sex with violence and murder subject matter on a few songs. On White Pony things became a little less cryptic line to line and the whole song would start revolving more around a central theme and told a bit of a story while keeping a certain level of vagueness. Examples include Feiticeira, Back to School, Knife Prty. White pony really started pushing the sex / violence thing to forefront which would be less important on the Self Titled album but make a large return on Saturday Night wrist.
On Diamond Eyes it's there but not as in the forefront as previous records. The lyrics do paint pictures but not as strong as past efforts. It avoids being cliche but there doesn't seem to be as many memorable lines and much of the language is very simple and straight forward, much like their first record actually. But the
subject matter is very different. Line to line and when viewed as a whole it can be very cryptic, but things aren't nearly as deep or poetic as they have been in the past. One thing I don't like is that when there needs to be a concrete line during a musically emphasized point it falls flat. Like on Rocket Skates, the music suddenly shifts from metal to some sort of dreamy thing, and he says "You're Red Soaking Wet" I think I see what he was trying to do there... by suddenly shifting gears and depicting a murder scene or something but feels like it falls flat and either the music or the lyric should change at that point. They don't seem like they support each other well enough.
One thing I found pretty creative was the song titles. I've always kind of liked that about the Deftones. Some songs can take on whole new meanings because of them and it can add a lot of depth. For instance on their self titled record it's unclear what Minerva might be about, but doing a bit of research you find that
Minerva was the Roman godess of music and poetry, and suddenly the whole song is cast in a different light and has a new depth. Similarly Knife Prty, from reading the lyrics you think it could be about heroin or something but it turns out to be actually about a fetish knife / sex party, which I thought was pretty creative. Sometimes their titles are often more creative and interesting sounding than the songs end up actually being lyrically. This is especially true for this record and Saturday Knight Wrist, which also had some of their wilder song titles.
I do enjoy the juxtaposition of say Sextape, which you'd think will be some sort of torture porn adventure like Feiticeira but you find it to be a positive dreamy song about what sounds like being in love, yet it's called Sextape. I kind of dig that combination.
PRODUCTION:
Overall is fine but it does sound on the cold side though. It could be warmer overall. I'm a big fan of huge distorted guitars. While this album has them, they feel a bit too tamed and pulled into the background. This could have something to do with Stephen Carpenter now using an 8 string guitar for much of the riffs, which reduces the fuzz and trebly-ness produced in a normal guitar distorted tone. The 8 string tone is kind of cool at times and reminds me of Meshuggah when he plays single note riffs. One other issue I have is that the keyboards and electronic elements were mixed so far into the background I didn't even realize most songs had keyboards on them till I watched a live version of the album, which is a shame because some of it is very interesting.
SUMMARY:
If the goal of this record was to create an emotionally deep engrossing work, I think it has failed. If it was to make a commercially viable homogeneous work that creates a nice fridge buzz in the background while you play video games they might have very well accomplished this. The Deftones have at the same time created a record that was heavier, but more mainstream and digestible while simultaneously not having any stand out hits. The chorus of the title track Diamond Eyes is a great example. The verses have heavy riffage, but the chorus has got a typical bland swaying 4 chord chorus that is very popular right now . It is very much like what Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown did. It's not in a similar genre at all, but overall the record is more neutral and less emotionally engrossing song to song, and more homogenous over all. It feels like it plays to and encourages their more average filler songs, than it does to their more emotionally unique hits.
A lot of reviews and comments say that this record is a "return to form" of their first two records and "just like white pony". It does bear a certain similarity to their first two records in a sense that the albums feel more cohesive and don't have as many stand out gems. It's definitely not like White Pony however,because there are no stand out hit tracks that make you really feel something deep, ala Change in the House of Flies. And it Defintiely does not have the dynamics or the variation. The main thing I feel they have in common is the dream pop vocals. But Saturday Night Wrist is almost all dream pop vocals throughout all parts of the songs. To me it sounds like they took some of the filler tracks of Around the Fur (while taking a
more modern Meshuggah like approach to the guitar riffs), and used that for the basis for the verses while adding in the melodic themes and positive upliftingness from Saturday Night wrist into the choruses.
All in all I give this Record a 4 out of 10 based on the below specifications.
1-Sad, hardly can be considered noise
2-Horrible, better off never recorded
3-Mind numbing, less than mediocre
4-Basic, mainstream machine
5- Alright, low expectations
6-Good, but has a few flaws
7-Well-done, deserves to be acknowledged
8-Excellent, stands well on its own
9-Amazing, always a great listen
10-Perfect, life changing work of art
It's not mainstream in the sense of what's popular right now, but mainstream also means closer to the average..and this record is very average, if not below average for the Deftones. Nobody on this record is doing anything special or surprising compared themselves or anyone else, with melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, production or otherwise. I'm not saying they have to be complicated, just interesting and emotional. None of them are very deep or make me feel anything special either. I'm very interested in hearing what their original record "Eros" sounded like before they scrapped it in favor of this one.
MELODY:
The Deftones have always had two sides to them. On the one hand they appeal people who love heavy riffage and screaming vocals. And others who like the dream dream pop vocals and strange ambience. I've always been a fan of the songs that dream pop vocals and bizarre moods than just the ones that seem to be mostly just about heavy riffs. I'd rather have both at the same time though, but they don't seem to always combine them very well. My favorites are songs like Change In the House of Flies, My Own Summer, Minerva, Be Quiet and Drive, Back To School (Mini Maggit), Pink Maggit, Digital Bath, Hexagram, and Anniversary of An Uninteresting Event. This album certainly has lots of melody, and the screaming takes a back seat, which is fine by me. But this record Chino's melodies are all over the place. The melodies feel convoluted and unsure of what they want to do.
Chino loves to jump out of key and into strange areas which has worked very well on other albums. But on this album it seems like it's a crutch. It as if when he's just about onto to a good hook he goes and jumps off in a weird direction killing it. It reminds me a lot of George Harrison whom I felt had the same problem. An example of this would be his song "Beware of Darkness". While the jumps out of key are certainly interesting they just feel like they don't always serve the song. It kind of gives the impression he was trying to cram melodies over guitar parts, perhaps instead of changing the guitar parts to fit the vocals.
These odd melodic shifts are often typical of dream pop, but for an example of something that works better... listen to "Only Shallow" by My Bloody valentine (an influence of Chino's by the way). The verses keep popping out of key and have weird shifts, but it all works together and becomes part of why the song is interesting.
But when the Deftones do it on this record, it comes across forced and doesn't serve the song. It also comes across as half baked, like the ideas he came up for the melodies where still rough drafts and that he was going to go back and finish them later. I have read that the band will often come up with the music first and then Chino will come in separately to put vocals in over it once it's done. This always seemed like a silly idea to me to write an entire song without the vocals present at all to help shape the song, when they are such an important part of the songs. What if he can't think of anything good over the riffs? Are they just gonna keep it anyways? There's no checks and balances there for the Vocals and accompaniment. I wonder if this has happened here.
RHYTHM:
Drums
The drums on this album are fairly typical for Deftones songs, they usually play a supporting role and usually never jump out at me and make me say "wow that's a sick drum part". They do play a role in creating a sonic texture for the band, and the drummer definitely has a signature style. He has a more reggae / ska sounding kit, much like 311. On this record I feel like the drums are doing their job, but nothing much more beyond that, which usually isn't a problem in their better songs. On this record it's like if the guitars or the vocals aren't doing something interesting, the drums might as well be. It feels a lot more apparent that the drums aren't doing that much when everything else is less interesting on top of them.
Bass
The bass also plays the supportive role in the Deftones. Mainly just following the guitar, but having it's moments here and there on certain songs to stand out. But the same thing kind of goes for bass as I said about the drums. If the guitar is just gonna be boring, the bass might as well not follow it and do something more interesting.
Rhythm Guitar
As for rhythm guitar riffs, I have to set the bar at My Own Summer. If I set the bar for rhythm guitar at that, they fall well below it on this record. A riff like that is very unique and very catchy at the same time. But really most of their records don't live up to that so I won't make that big of a deal out of it.
The riffs are meaner than the last few records, but kinda stock for metal riffs in general and not really anything that unique that you'd want to write home about. And that's fine if they are in a supporting role, supporting something more catchy and important. But a lot of the songs give the impression that the guitars are supposed to be more of a central focus. I will give them props though for setting a more menacing atmosphere during many of the verses which I like. Really the verses are where the guitar shines through on this record. Things work well on the verses of songs like Diamond Eyes, and rocket skates. CMND / CNTRL has one of the best riffs in it's chorus on the record.
HARMONY:
Guitar
While the verses the guitar is doing it's job well, in the choruses either the vocals need to change to support the guitars more or the guitars need to support the vocals more. It often seems like they are each doing their own thing. The harmony definitely doesn't feel in the pocket enough on the choruses. A good example of this is CMND/CNTRL. That riff during the chorus is very interesting, but Chino throws a mediocre drifting melody over it and we're left with something where the melody doesn't help bring out the best in the riff and riff doesn't bring out the best in the guitar.
Keyboards
There are keyboards all over this record and they are actually pretty creative, when you can hear them. They aren't creative in an overt sense but more of a subtle sense. They pretty much totally support the guitar and fill out areas you don't realize are there till after you listen a few times. Then you suddenly realize
he's doing all this different stuff and using all these different sounds. I really don't understand how he's able to do so many different things yet also remain so subtle. It would be nicer if he was more in the forefront though.
TEXTURE:
The texture of this record remains fairly consistent throughout, only really breaking to do Prince and Sextape. Texture doesn't feel like an especially important element for this record. There's no real other textures beside the standard drum / bass / guitar / vocal setup. The keyboards are there but they sit inside the guitar and vocals so perfectly and the way they are mixed makes them feel as if they are barely
there. There are a few sparse electronic elements here and there but it's very subtle. It's not a very big issue for me, but it would be nice to have more variation to break things up and enhance the mood.
ALBUM COHESIVENESS:
The record feels very cohesive, but this works against it. Many of the songs seem like they are following a similar formula and feels too homogenized. There's no real stand out hits. There isn't much in the way of dynamics within the themselves and listening to the whole record it's one song after the other that sounds very similar. You don't get big shifts in the style of songs like how White Pony has Back to School, Teenager, Digital Bath, Change In the House of Flies. That record is able to remain diverse, yet the songs still feel like they belong together on a record. One thing that becomes very apparent is that there is a lack of "heavy" choruses, and here I will define heavy as sounding mean, aggressive, angry, and / or threatening. Many of the verses have a threatening vibe while all the choruses lift into a positive /spiritual / religiosy / dream pop vibe. This type of chorus is great for songs like Minerva, but here it doesn't often feel right, especially when almost every single song has this same formula. For some songs it
definitely kills the vibe, instead of taking you on an interesting detour. Many of the choruses don't really serve the song, and they seem like they were just thrown in there to take up space. Often they come across as watered down and half baked. It has been a trend for many bands of late, to write simple happy choruses with heavier verses (as apposed to the 90's lighter verse and heavy mean chorus) and I don't quite get why you wouldn't want a mean chorus. It's something I don't like about this record. I would like to give props for the cover artwork. I feel like it captures the mood of the title track in the image very well.
LYRICS:
The lyrics on this record are okay. Chino said he wanted to return to "painting pictures" and being more abstract than doing the typical nu metal thing where he's writing about how much he hates his abstract personal demons. But he hasn't really done the outward hatred thing very much since Around the Fur. In fact their last record kind of did the abstract painting pictures thing a lot more and it was more poetic.
On their first two records the lyrics were abstract and vague but they were much more about directing aggression outward at problems or people. During Around the Fur he started his trend combining sex with violence and murder subject matter on a few songs. On White Pony things became a little less cryptic line to line and the whole song would start revolving more around a central theme and told a bit of a story while keeping a certain level of vagueness. Examples include Feiticeira, Back to School, Knife Prty. White pony really started pushing the sex / violence thing to forefront which would be less important on the Self Titled album but make a large return on Saturday Night wrist.
On Diamond Eyes it's there but not as in the forefront as previous records. The lyrics do paint pictures but not as strong as past efforts. It avoids being cliche but there doesn't seem to be as many memorable lines and much of the language is very simple and straight forward, much like their first record actually. But the
subject matter is very different. Line to line and when viewed as a whole it can be very cryptic, but things aren't nearly as deep or poetic as they have been in the past. One thing I don't like is that when there needs to be a concrete line during a musically emphasized point it falls flat. Like on Rocket Skates, the music suddenly shifts from metal to some sort of dreamy thing, and he says "You're Red Soaking Wet" I think I see what he was trying to do there... by suddenly shifting gears and depicting a murder scene or something but feels like it falls flat and either the music or the lyric should change at that point. They don't seem like they support each other well enough.
One thing I found pretty creative was the song titles. I've always kind of liked that about the Deftones. Some songs can take on whole new meanings because of them and it can add a lot of depth. For instance on their self titled record it's unclear what Minerva might be about, but doing a bit of research you find that
Minerva was the Roman godess of music and poetry, and suddenly the whole song is cast in a different light and has a new depth. Similarly Knife Prty, from reading the lyrics you think it could be about heroin or something but it turns out to be actually about a fetish knife / sex party, which I thought was pretty creative. Sometimes their titles are often more creative and interesting sounding than the songs end up actually being lyrically. This is especially true for this record and Saturday Knight Wrist, which also had some of their wilder song titles.
I do enjoy the juxtaposition of say Sextape, which you'd think will be some sort of torture porn adventure like Feiticeira but you find it to be a positive dreamy song about what sounds like being in love, yet it's called Sextape. I kind of dig that combination.
PRODUCTION:
Overall is fine but it does sound on the cold side though. It could be warmer overall. I'm a big fan of huge distorted guitars. While this album has them, they feel a bit too tamed and pulled into the background. This could have something to do with Stephen Carpenter now using an 8 string guitar for much of the riffs, which reduces the fuzz and trebly-ness produced in a normal guitar distorted tone. The 8 string tone is kind of cool at times and reminds me of Meshuggah when he plays single note riffs. One other issue I have is that the keyboards and electronic elements were mixed so far into the background I didn't even realize most songs had keyboards on them till I watched a live version of the album, which is a shame because some of it is very interesting.
SUMMARY:
If the goal of this record was to create an emotionally deep engrossing work, I think it has failed. If it was to make a commercially viable homogeneous work that creates a nice fridge buzz in the background while you play video games they might have very well accomplished this. The Deftones have at the same time created a record that was heavier, but more mainstream and digestible while simultaneously not having any stand out hits. The chorus of the title track Diamond Eyes is a great example. The verses have heavy riffage, but the chorus has got a typical bland swaying 4 chord chorus that is very popular right now . It is very much like what Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown did. It's not in a similar genre at all, but overall the record is more neutral and less emotionally engrossing song to song, and more homogenous over all. It feels like it plays to and encourages their more average filler songs, than it does to their more emotionally unique hits.
A lot of reviews and comments say that this record is a "return to form" of their first two records and "just like white pony". It does bear a certain similarity to their first two records in a sense that the albums feel more cohesive and don't have as many stand out gems. It's definitely not like White Pony however,because there are no stand out hit tracks that make you really feel something deep, ala Change in the House of Flies. And it Defintiely does not have the dynamics or the variation. The main thing I feel they have in common is the dream pop vocals. But Saturday Night Wrist is almost all dream pop vocals throughout all parts of the songs. To me it sounds like they took some of the filler tracks of Around the Fur (while taking a
more modern Meshuggah like approach to the guitar riffs), and used that for the basis for the verses while adding in the melodic themes and positive upliftingness from Saturday Night wrist into the choruses.
All in all I give this Record a 4 out of 10 based on the below specifications.
1-Sad, hardly can be considered noise
2-Horrible, better off never recorded
3-Mind numbing, less than mediocre
4-Basic, mainstream machine
5- Alright, low expectations
6-Good, but has a few flaws
7-Well-done, deserves to be acknowledged
8-Excellent, stands well on its own
9-Amazing, always a great listen
10-Perfect, life changing work of art
It's not mainstream in the sense of what's popular right now, but mainstream also means closer to the average..and this record is very average, if not below average for the Deftones. Nobody on this record is doing anything special or surprising compared themselves or anyone else, with melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, production or otherwise. I'm not saying they have to be complicated, just interesting and emotional. None of them are very deep or make me feel anything special either. I'm very interested in hearing what their original record "Eros" sounded like before they scrapped it in favor of this one.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Miley Cyrus In A Nusthell
In this vid Miley Cyrus is being interviewed about her song Party in the USA. Not only does she readily admit she didn't write it and has no idea about what's going on with the music in it, but also that she doesn't even really like it and she doesn't even like or listen to "pop" music. Which is surprising....since her entire career involves being a part of the pop music industry.
On the one hand I am disturbed by her nonchalance about not knowing or caring about her own music and admitting that she pretty much does things just for the money... but on the other hand I'm kind of glad she admits to not liking it. It shows she has a certain level of sanity.
I think this says a lot about her and the people involved in the pop music world.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Rebuttle to Staying Naive
Often when I try to learn something new, like a piece of music, a mixing technique, or a vocal technique... and I specifically want to sound similar to something that already exists, I find that there are a few certain opinions I consistently run across. Often when reading forum posts there is at least one person out there who starts a long post about how you "needn't worry about sounding like someone else, just sound like yourself."
They usually go on to name a few points like:
While I will agree with all these things in certain contexts, for me I find most of them to be untrue.
Take the first point. I personally agree that you should strive to be original and go off into uncharted territory and find yourself, but at the same time, that is clearly not everyone's goal. It depends on how you define "success". If your goal was commercial success, right now in the pop music industry originality is NOT selling. Everybody is trying to copy everybody else who's popular and deviating from things that are known to have been successful in the past is risky. The originators of a trend usually get the most glory, but with every trend that has ever come out, there are always followers and complete ripoffs that end up taking a slice. There are examples of rip offs who have become more successful than their more original counterparts. Just look at Elvis. So being original may make you the most successful commercially, like Beatles and Michael Jackson, but how often do one of those come around? Very rarely... yet we seem to still have millionaire rock and pop stars every year...
What bothers me most about the next two points is that I feel like they want to keep you ignorant and want to discourage you from learning new things.
This is not entirely true either. I agree that when people copy other people it's really kind of lame. But a lot of people who do are putting out finished songs. It doesn't mean you shouldn't try to sound like someone for learning purposes, or to see what might happen if you tried. Take the Nirvana song "About A Girl". This song was written after Kurt Cobain listened to the Beatles all day and then tried to write a song in a similar style. At first glance it might not jump out at you as being heavily beatles influenced, he definitely found his own style and applied it. But had he listened to the above statement, he might not have ever attempted it, and we'd have missed out on a great song. In his attempts to sound like somebody else, he found his own way of conveying himself.
"Don't do things by the book, or you'll just retread old ground. Try to stay naive about your instrument / technique/ songwriting so you'll happen upon mistakes and do things that the "experts" would overlook"
For me this technique has almost never worked. But for some artists it's essential to their style. I seem to just run around in circles of mediocre ideas until I try to learn something that's really outside of my comfort zone, then I seem to get a jolt of creativity that results from it. For example, on more than one occasion I've tried to learn something comepletely different than the style of song I was trying to write, and it ended up helping me write a better song. (see my post on my compositional technique the Mozart Effect) For instance, I was trying to write a pop punk song, and stopped and went to go learn some speed metal stuff. It made something click and ended up writing a better and more inspired and robust pop punk song. I seem to need to consistently learn new things and find new catalysts for inspiration. If I just ignore the outside world and try to listen to only myself, I eventually just seem to return to my comfort zone and things start to become very average. Everytime I learn something that is unlike what I want to be I somehow seem to find myself more. And the more I learn and the more skills I acquire, the more I feel like I can see between the cracks of music and see what people haven't done before.
I do admit, making mistakes is huge part of creative process. And putting yourself in situations where you might just stumble across things you would have never thought of is important. But disregarding learning new things just so that I might by chance make a happy accident every once in a while from not knowing what I'm doing just isn't a good enough trade off for me. For instance I recently just realized a new way to think about constructing melodies, whereby I pick out a few points of a riff or chord progression I want to emphasize and then just try to connect the dots. I never thought about it that way before, and now I'm able to visualize melodies over riffs I was never able to think of anything over before.
It's unsure how long it would have taken me to derive that for myself if I hadn't actively tried to pursue it, instead of sitting around by myself isolated from the world just winging it. It was something that may seem obvious to other people but it wasn't to me for some reason, even though it was a very simple idea. I really feel like those who don't learn from the past are condemned to repeat it, although there will always be exceptions.
I think a lot of this fear of trying to do things by the book comes from a very old school way of teaching music that said "this is the only way things are done" and "this is what good music is, and this is what bad music is", when music had to be more intellectual instead of for pure enjoyment. But much of the 20th century was about breaking down all those barriers in the art world. This thought black and white process for music instruction and art has been largely abandoned. It's widely accepted now that pretty much anything goes, and it does. In the internet age you can pretty much find an audience for anything, anything is valid. Yet these fears of an elitest music teacher telling people "this is the only way to do things!" is still out there. And it's getting old. Where are these elitist teachers keeping everyone down? Forcing theory down everyone's throats. They just aren't there.
People seem to think what's good for one person is good for everyone. But people need to realize that it all depends on what they want to do. If someone wants to be an opera singer, they are going to need to do things a little bit more by the book, because that whole style is built upon years of rigorous training, and following specific guidelines and tradition. And if someone wanted to be a DIY 80's punk rocker then they should probably just learn 3 chords and just wing it, because that's what that style calls for. But the Punk Rocker can't tell the opera singer "sight reading and learning music theory is bullshit, I don't use any of that stuff" because the opera does need that stuff to be successful. And the Opera singer can't force theory and sight singing and all of that down the Punk's throat because in that style it's unnecessary for success.
They usually go on to name a few points like:
- "finding your own style is the most important thing you can do, once you do that you usually end up finding success"
- "whenever anyone tries to copy others it's unoriginal and loses heart"
- "try to stay naive about your instrument / technique/ songwriting so you'll happen upon mistakes and do things that the "experts" would overlook"
While I will agree with all these things in certain contexts, for me I find most of them to be untrue.
Take the first point. I personally agree that you should strive to be original and go off into uncharted territory and find yourself, but at the same time, that is clearly not everyone's goal. It depends on how you define "success". If your goal was commercial success, right now in the pop music industry originality is NOT selling. Everybody is trying to copy everybody else who's popular and deviating from things that are known to have been successful in the past is risky. The originators of a trend usually get the most glory, but with every trend that has ever come out, there are always followers and complete ripoffs that end up taking a slice. There are examples of rip offs who have become more successful than their more original counterparts. Just look at Elvis. So being original may make you the most successful commercially, like Beatles and Michael Jackson, but how often do one of those come around? Very rarely... yet we seem to still have millionaire rock and pop stars every year...
What bothers me most about the next two points is that I feel like they want to keep you ignorant and want to discourage you from learning new things.
"whenever anyone tries to copy others it's unoriginal and loses heart"
This is not entirely true either. I agree that when people copy other people it's really kind of lame. But a lot of people who do are putting out finished songs. It doesn't mean you shouldn't try to sound like someone for learning purposes, or to see what might happen if you tried. Take the Nirvana song "About A Girl". This song was written after Kurt Cobain listened to the Beatles all day and then tried to write a song in a similar style. At first glance it might not jump out at you as being heavily beatles influenced, he definitely found his own style and applied it. But had he listened to the above statement, he might not have ever attempted it, and we'd have missed out on a great song. In his attempts to sound like somebody else, he found his own way of conveying himself.
"Don't do things by the book, or you'll just retread old ground. Try to stay naive about your instrument / technique/ songwriting so you'll happen upon mistakes and do things that the "experts" would overlook"
For me this technique has almost never worked. But for some artists it's essential to their style. I seem to just run around in circles of mediocre ideas until I try to learn something that's really outside of my comfort zone, then I seem to get a jolt of creativity that results from it. For example, on more than one occasion I've tried to learn something comepletely different than the style of song I was trying to write, and it ended up helping me write a better song. (see my post on my compositional technique the Mozart Effect) For instance, I was trying to write a pop punk song, and stopped and went to go learn some speed metal stuff. It made something click and ended up writing a better and more inspired and robust pop punk song. I seem to need to consistently learn new things and find new catalysts for inspiration. If I just ignore the outside world and try to listen to only myself, I eventually just seem to return to my comfort zone and things start to become very average. Everytime I learn something that is unlike what I want to be I somehow seem to find myself more. And the more I learn and the more skills I acquire, the more I feel like I can see between the cracks of music and see what people haven't done before.
I do admit, making mistakes is huge part of creative process. And putting yourself in situations where you might just stumble across things you would have never thought of is important. But disregarding learning new things just so that I might by chance make a happy accident every once in a while from not knowing what I'm doing just isn't a good enough trade off for me. For instance I recently just realized a new way to think about constructing melodies, whereby I pick out a few points of a riff or chord progression I want to emphasize and then just try to connect the dots. I never thought about it that way before, and now I'm able to visualize melodies over riffs I was never able to think of anything over before.
It's unsure how long it would have taken me to derive that for myself if I hadn't actively tried to pursue it, instead of sitting around by myself isolated from the world just winging it. It was something that may seem obvious to other people but it wasn't to me for some reason, even though it was a very simple idea. I really feel like those who don't learn from the past are condemned to repeat it, although there will always be exceptions.
I think a lot of this fear of trying to do things by the book comes from a very old school way of teaching music that said "this is the only way things are done" and "this is what good music is, and this is what bad music is", when music had to be more intellectual instead of for pure enjoyment. But much of the 20th century was about breaking down all those barriers in the art world. This thought black and white process for music instruction and art has been largely abandoned. It's widely accepted now that pretty much anything goes, and it does. In the internet age you can pretty much find an audience for anything, anything is valid. Yet these fears of an elitest music teacher telling people "this is the only way to do things!" is still out there. And it's getting old. Where are these elitist teachers keeping everyone down? Forcing theory down everyone's throats. They just aren't there.
People seem to think what's good for one person is good for everyone. But people need to realize that it all depends on what they want to do. If someone wants to be an opera singer, they are going to need to do things a little bit more by the book, because that whole style is built upon years of rigorous training, and following specific guidelines and tradition. And if someone wanted to be a DIY 80's punk rocker then they should probably just learn 3 chords and just wing it, because that's what that style calls for. But the Punk Rocker can't tell the opera singer "sight reading and learning music theory is bullshit, I don't use any of that stuff" because the opera does need that stuff to be successful. And the Opera singer can't force theory and sight singing and all of that down the Punk's throat because in that style it's unnecessary for success.
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