Aug 19
AndrewMusic
Memo to Caleb Followill and Kings of Leon: You don’t need Glee, but that doesn’t mean you should be stupid about turning down the show.
It might be time that Kings of Leon break their “no sell out” policy for Glee considering it’s only one of the most popular shows on television. Followill’s insists he’s never seen the show, so, sir, here’s a primer. The kids turn your most popular songs into their most popular songs by arranging them in choir-esque vocal jam sessions. It’s cute, it’s quaint, and it’s typically wrapped in a bubblegum storyline package that neatly ties together that episode’s themes. It’s also watched by 8 million people which is about 4 times greater than the total number of copies you pushed of your breakthrough album Only by the Night. That means you’re looking to possibly pick up 6 million interested new fans, and don’t tell me it offends your indie sensibility. You tossed that away when you released Use Somebody as a single.
I understand you turned down Ugly Betty. Fine, nobody watches it anyway. Licensing your music to shows and movies doesn’t make you a sell out, it provides you exposure to audiences that might otherwise not know you exist. That is, people who are willing to buy tickets to your concerts and pony up money to buy magazines with your face on the cover. Your attitude is exactly the kind of nearsighted bullshit egomania that you can’t afford.
Man, I hate your band even more now. Your show, which I took a friend to as a birthday gift, was a noisy mess and altogether unenjoyable. But I respected your band for earning your credibility on the road when you’ve been largely ignored by radio before Sex on Fire, but that’s exactly why you need Glee. My respect for you is less for confusing selling out with cross-marketing, for thinking being indie-cool is better than pop giants, and for thinking licensing your music is settling when it’s exactly the kind of lift your band could use to its advantage. In the end, you want the luxury of being able to be your own band, which is exactly why you shouldn’t ignore opportunities like this whether you’ve seen the show or not. Don’t you have a new album, Come Around Sundown, coming out October 19? I’m guessing you wouldn’t say no to increased album sales, so why say no to Glee? You’re smart guys, I guess, but this move was just plain dumb.
Aug 03
AndrewMusic
The big question hanging over Guster is whether anyone is still listening. As a live act, the band has always been a formidably entertaining force on stage. Drummer Brian Rosenworcel alone is worth the price of admission. But their last studio release 2006’s Ganging Up on the Sun was a bit lackluster. None of the tracks really sucked, but that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement either. So today, they finally previewed new music with the release of their single Do You Love Me.
The track, being released ahead of their October 5 album Easy Wonderful, definitely hearkens back to the band’s earlier sound rather than their most recent efforts. It evokes running through a field of flowers hand in hand with your lover, as any poppy love song ought to. It even has the requisite Do do do do, do do do do bridge, which could have been yanked straight out of the seventies. Ryan Miller’s vocals are front and center on this one, but not in a bothersome way. The instrumentation, something that has always been uniquely Guster, seems to have taken a backseat, but again not in a bothersome way.
Fans will embrace this song as a glimpse of good things to come. Do You Love Me amicably questions whether anyone would welcome a little more Guster in their lives, but I think it’s pretty clear from this single that the answer is yes.
Aug 03
AndrewMusic
There’s nothing like an overproduced album of generic emo rock music to make you pine for the Swiss Army Romance days of Dashboard Confessional. The new album by Secondhand Serenade, Hear Me Now, pines for those days too. Ten years ago, emo was a new take on the acoustic, minimalist broken-hearted pining that was perfected first (and still best) by Chris Carrabba. Since then, the term emo has fallen out of favor, mainly because that same heartfelt lovelorn strumming has been replaced by overdone harmonies, added layers of electronica-cheese whiz, and guitars swallowed up in the production values.
That’s where Hear Me Now steps into the fray. The emo-lyrics of heartbreak (the track Stay Away), unrequited love (album opener Distance) and romantic (mis-)connections (You and I) are still ever-present, but there’s something lost in translation. To put it succinctly, this album is boring.
I hesitate to blame John Vesely completely for this turgid mess of an album. I think he’s put together a precisely intended collection of songs. If one wants Hoobastank cited as a musical influence and if one spent their formative years listening to Third Eye Blind, well, there’s not much you can expect than the perfectly tortured agony of Hear Me Now. “Tortured” is a good way to describe the album. The production is tortured, the vocals are tortured, and the lyrics are mindlessly unoriginal and repetitive. “Is there anybody out there? Would you hear me if I screamed or if I cried?” cries out Vesely on Is There Anybody Out There. Well, what would you expect him to sing about?
Having unsuccessfully tried to identify a memorable standout track on the album, I turned to iTunes to tell me which track best spoke to Secondhand Serenade’s intended audience (of which I am so clearly not a member). That proved fruitless, since they are all still pining for 2008’s A Twist in My Story, according to iTunes Top Secondhand Serenade songs list. That left simply looking for the first single release, the track Something More.
To be fair, I went back to hear Something More one last time. With its “Breath in, breath out” lyrics, it’s not nearly as dynamic as a rock track, nor quite as sincere as any Dashboard Confessional song of the last ten years besides Don’t Wait. In fact, there’s pretty much nothing notable about the track at all except my lack of interest in hearing it again. That goes double for the album it came from. And that makes me pine for the emo days of yore too.
Jul 12
AndrewBusiness, Music
A few weeks ago, I bought what I declared to be my last compact disc ever! It felt like a pivotal moment for me as a music consumer because I finally declared myself free of the physical and embraced the digital wholly.
I am a voracious music consumer; live shows, compact discs, digital tracks, even the occasional tour t-shirt. Philosophically, I’ve never balked at paying for music, but I still look for the value in what I’m buying. The value of the music is itself inherent but the music industry has long tried to convince consumers to value the packaging at least as much. Compact discs used to be works of art (as were music videos at one time) when cds were valued as an enhancement of the music experience.
Digital sales wiped out the presentation aspect of cds (even if downloads do come with the album artwork) in exchange for a cheaper price point. It created a new model for music distribution that eroded the artistic value of the compact disc and at the same time, provided an easier mode for sharing the music without paying for it (remember the days of mixtapes?) The net effect? The value of music is being judged solely on how good it is.
In way, it’s a great thing, and I think the artists themselves would agree. The problem though is that the music industry on a whole hasn’t figured how to continue to be profitable and still embrace the new era of change. And ironically, though compact disc sales are slumping, digital sales, despite modest growth, still only represent 5% of music sales annually. So how are consumers getting their music?
It’s a question that the record companies have been grappling unsuccessfully with for at least half a decade. Remember when the RIAA – Recording Industry Association of America – was suing consumers for piracy? A the time, the move sounded like a bad joke; and it stank of a desperation tactic. Worse, the lawsuits had zero impact on music piracy and did little more than confirm what everyone had already agreed upon in the first place: the record companies (and in some cases, the musicians) owned the music. The consumers had no problem owning up to it; they just weren’t paying for it anymore.
More recently, pile on the overpricing of concert tours, and it’s worth asking: how are consumers getting their music fix?
There are some obvious answers. Pandora is still free, as is radio (both internet and more traditional airwaves). Music file sharing is still happening. Artists are more cognizant of how giving away free music can be a useful promotional tool (not for nothing, but the record company has been slow to figure it out). But does it have to be free to get people to listen?
I’m no more sure of the answer than the record companies, so I can only look at my own experience as a music consumer. I will only buy a compact disc for an album that I’ve already heard. If I know I like the music, I’m more than willing to pay for the disc itself (and that has been true for years, not just recently). I actually rarely buy complete digital albums (occasionally if I deem the “bonus tracks” worth buying the whole album, I’ll go for it) so most of my music consumption is individual digital tracks. So in fact, my consumption habits fairly accurately reflect the overall consumer trends of the music industry. My digital purchases: maybe 10% of my overall purchases. My compact disc purchases: down (way down) from 10 years ago. And the rest of my music consumption are tracks I come across in the course of my day to day, either shared from friends or heard on the radio or offered free directly from the artist.
Despite my intention to stop buying cds, the truth is, my habits haven’t changed. If I know the music, buying the compact disc is worth it to me. Otherwise, I am perfectly comfortable seeking out individual digital tracks, either free or purchased as the opportunity presents itself.
I recognize that the music industry is facing a lot of pressure from consumers like me because not that long ago, I was the type of person supporting the existing business model. But that model is busted and I just don’t see what is going to replace it. The truth is, despite a few music purchases here and there, I’m just not buying it anymore. And from what I can tell, neither is anyone else.
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Andrew Marx is the author of Thank You is Implied: The Annotated Smart ReMarx, a collection of essays from his 17-year writing career, annotated with new commentary, anecdotes and the occasional apology.
Jul 06
AndrewLife in Digital, Music
The artist known as Prince made a statement to the The Daily Mirror, a print newspaper in the United Kingdom which the artist has contracted with to release his next disc, that the internet is over. Prince is planning on giving away copies of 20Ten in the U.K. and in select European countries rather than attempting to sell it. The musician has shut down his website’s online store, and as yet, a U.S. distribution deal is only a rumor. With regards to digital sales, iTunes and other distributors are out of luck because according to the pop artist, there’s no reason to engage with them at all. If you believe the buzz, he has unabashedly called the internet a fad, and he’s so over it.
In some respects, I’m intrigued by his attitude, even if I disagree with it. The internet is the perfect example of something that’s great except when it’s not. It’s great when you can look up a minute piece of information from almost anywhere in the world. It sucks when you’re looking for something that’s probably there but for using the right search terms. It’s great that you can insta-message just about anyone plugged into the digital age, but it sucks because, phone or laptop, people expect insta-replies and know you got the message no matter that you might claim otherwise. It’s great because it greatly expands your reach as an artist, writer or other creative soul. It sucks when people steal your works and share them freely without your permission.
In theory, this is Prince’s real beef. The internet makes it too easy for his music to find itself in the hands of the wrong person. In practice, Prince has always made it clear that he expects to be paid for his creative output, nevermind the quality of his music, the relationships with his fans, or the state of the music business in 20Ten. It’s not up to you to decide whether you pay for his music, it’s only up to him. So he gives it away freely on compact disc, but cries foul at the abuse of digital media, some tracks that are purchased legitimately, some “borrowed” via nefarious internet file-sharing. The wrong person, then, is anyone on the planet who didn’t ask Prince for permission first to listen to his music.
It’s an antagonistic tactic for an artist to take, and in that light, it doesn’t really signal the death knell of the internet quite the way Prince is predicting. It may, indeed, have lost some of its novelty in recent years, but it is not in any way clear that the internet has also lost its utility. The very thing condemned by the Prince is the ability to share far and wide one’s creative output. Most artists embrace that. Prince seems determined to go the other way.
Ironically, it’s Prince’s fame (and no doubt, the sum of his royalty payments too) that he can afford to take such a strict stance on music distribution. Thank God that Prince was enslaved by Warner Bros. for all the years of his record contract because otherwise he might still be struggling to become the renowned artist that he is. He can afford to give away his works and limit their distribution and slap the hands of anyone who wants to share his music, all in the name of artistry for artistry’s sake. That fact that he still insists on bringing up the cash value of his works is as contradictory as it is unsubtle a message. It’s not about income so much as it is about control. Prince will cede the one as long as he isn’t expected to surrender the other.
For most other creative individuals, the internet is an asset, one that works because of the ease with which creative output can be shared, not because of it. For Prince, it’s just another fad.
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Andrew Marx is the author of the upcoming Smart ReMarx collection Thank You is Implied, available August 10.
Jun 15
AndrewMusic
It’s hard for me to connect with Laws of Illusion, the new album from Sarah McLachlan. The tracks blend seamlessly together, but that’s exactly the problem. There’s very little that standouts from the rest. I previewed the disc while working on another project and only realized later that I hadn’t actually heard the songs at all. They served as mostly background noise during that hour.
McLachlan is a fantastic songwriter, and she knows how to create whole tapestries of harmony in ways few other artists do (Annie Lennox is probably the best contemporary example). So while all of Illusions is beautiful, there doesn’t seem to be enough to differentiate the tracks from one another. The album starts with one of its best tracks Awakenings which is also probably closest to early McLachlan style. U Want Me 2, which appeared on the greatest hits collection, emerges again. It’s a fantastic track, despite its origins in her divorce. (Don’t Give Up on Us also appeared on the greatest hits collection as well as Laws of Illusion). And One Dream, some of her best work in ages, isn’t even included on the album. It’s available as a single or as part of the Lilith Fair compilation. So in the way of new music, well, it’s pretty slim pickings.
If you like McLachlan’s ethereal imagery and soaring melodies, this album will sound like a familiar friend coming back to visit. But, if you’re like most people that were introduced to McLachlan thanks to the vibrant and dynamic tracks on Surfacing (a flawless album from start to finish). Something about that album boiled where this one simmers. After waiting seven years for new music, it’s just a little disappointing.
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