Two Reviews: Lou Barlow & Thee Oh Sees
Captain Barlow, Hero
I comfort myself with the lonesome delusion that almost everyone out there anticipates conversations they might have. At some point. Some day maybe. Morning commute fills with anticipated conversations. That ex-girlfriend might happen to run into the same bakery on the same day. Your boss asks what are you truly feeling. The police officer — hesitates.
He’s not quite sure if you were really speeding.
Recently, I’ve had a constant vision of being asked the question: “what kind of music do you like?” Perhaps it’s my dour, self-important and secretive nature indulging itself over its favorite agony. The music writer yearns to describe his milieu? Maybe it’s anticipation of oncoming family dinners over the next six weeks that pulls on me a little bit, the time of the year when people ask too many questions in order to fill time they were never meant to spend together consecutively. Opportunity for a concealed identity, revealed. Enough to make them wonder.
Thee Oh Sees
Facts are, I couldn’t quite tell that imagined stranger what it is that I like to listen to. There is no comfort zone, no 71 degree, sunny Sunday. One day it’s laconic folk (yesterday). Today while cleaning the house, I needed the radio’s randomalia (XMU channel 43). In general I could point to the two albums with reviews linked here as the types of records that I shudder and giggle in the face of. Music that I find myself adoring in secret. When I listened to Lou Barlow, it makes me happy, his ability to endure the vastness of his obscure gifts and bristling personality; to a band like Thee Oh Sees, how earnestly they approach nuanced, sonic disasters.
Some days it’s the grandiosity of Elton John.
I’d tell that person, my music tastes aren’t something I can easily hem into an aisle at the music store. The answer would — will — give me power, such power. I’ll dive into my iPod and listen to the new Kings of Convenience album and pine for my days of liberal arts and college radio DJ work.
That I’m certain is a familiar refrain.
http://www.kevchino.com/review/thee-oh-sees/dog-poison/1914
http://www.kevchino.com/review/lou-barlow/goodnight-unknown/1905
Posted: November 17th, 2009 under Music Reviews.