Still Wet

at Outsider Writers Carbon-Based Lifeform Blues.

BOKKUS is Alive

BOKKUS is Dead
by No Regrets Coyote 

Spaghetti Spaghetti Records

released 15 May 2012

There’s something going on in Nashville. It has nothing to do with country music, thank jeebus. Young hard-ass rockers on small labels have begun making names for themselves, most hard-assly, JEFF The Brotherhood and Diarrhea Planet. No Regrets Coyote has stepped up and continues the next wave of the assault. These guys look like they’re 15 but I guess youth is good if you have it. I haven’t had it in a while, but I’m reminded by this band what it was like. Their debut EP, Bokkus Is Dead, is a five-song ear-scratcher that energizes as it destroys. The production is as rough as the guitar tracks are addictive, the Diarrhea Planet-like vocals gargling out existential quandaries (“I’m drunk and I can’t bum a cigarette”, “Is there any way you can get your shit together?”) amidst a splattering of minor-chord mayhem. I guess what I like most about Bokkus is that at its grungiest, it sounds like a much more raw, less introspective, sped-up and punked-out version of Superdrag’s seminal 1996 debut, Regretfully Yours (before they got all stupid-trippy and god-squady, respectively) especially the EP’s last and best track, “Slow Burn,” a song I have no idea what it’s about but have been playing it obsessively to the detriment of sleep and what little health remains in my later years. And dare I say that there are echoes in the guitar tones of early Pavement but catchier? I dare. Anything that harkens back to the MTV “Buzz Bin” era is a good thing and No Regrets Coyote is a great thing. Get on this ship and enjoy the sink. This band should be big, as long as they don't find religion. 

so slow to find the good stuff but I found this

Kill For Love by Chromatics

Label: Italians Do It Better

Release: March 26, 2012



I’m going to preface this by admitting that I know next to nothing about Chromatic’s previous oeuvre except for a couple songs, like the excellent “Hands In The Dark,” so I’m no expert on the Portland band’s progression to get to where they’ve gotten on their latest album, Kill For Love. What I do know is that this album is fucking awesome, which is a word that gets overused to death but the first gut feeling that comes to mind when I think of this collection of sounds really is awe (and indigestion from the Spicy McChicken I just ate). If “ominously joyous” is an oxymoron then fuck you because that’s the current running through Kill For Love like said McChicken through me. Relentless beats that, refreshingly, aren’t in-your-face electronica, lush and spooktacular keyboard arrangements, gritty guitar sparks, pop-adelically obscured vocals of both the feminine and masculine persuasion. Stuff for going out and looking at people, before bed quiet time, during bed loud time, hangover cures in a dark cave. Anti-anthems like the title track and “Back from the Grave” sound like clever Cure/Human League/New Order/Crystal Castles/David Byrne-on-Percocet mash-up records. Which means: wow. Fuzzy instrumentals like “Broken Mirrors” and “There’s a Light Out on the Horizon” are testaments to better and darker adventures than you’ve ever had with people you wish you could meet. The album’s best song, “These Streets Will Never Look the Same,” (perfect for driving to a keg party in a sparsely populated forest region) represents one of the few acceptable uses of Auto-Tune in recorded history. And I know I mention David Bowie in every post but there are more than a few hints of The White Duke lurking like a coked-out specter on the fringe of the tracks, especially the sanguineous “A Matter of Time,” which doesn’t really sound like David Bowie at all. I guess all I’m trying to say is do yourself a favor and check Chromatics out. And if you see me nodding at you on the Subway, it’s not because I’m acknowledging your presence as a distinct, hardworking and respectable member of society, it’s because I’m jamming out to “Lady” and trying desperately to free myself from the confines of the banal, joyless world you call home. Also, there’s a pretty sweet Neil Young cover.

best drug albums

David Bowie – Low

Simple Kid – Simple Kid

Butthole Surfers – Locust Abortion Technician

Pink Floyd – A Saucerful of Secrets

Flaming Lips – Clouds Taste Metallic

Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles

Talking Heads – Speaking in Tongues

Bob Marley – Legend

Dr. Dre – The Chronic

New Radicals – Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too

Pink Floyd – DSOTM

Human League - Dare

The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground

Weezer – Pinkerton

Jay-Z – Reasonable Doubt

Smashing Pumpkins - Gish

Ween – The Pod

Grateful Dead – Shakedown Street

Phish – Story of the Ghost

Pavement – Slanted and Enchanted

DMX – It’s Dark and Hell is Hot

Flaming Lips – everything recorded after 2009

Neon Indian – Psychic Chasms

Del Tha Funkee Homosapien – Deltron 3030

Hum – You’d Prefer an Astronaut

Big L – The Big Picture

Silver Jews – Starlite Walker

Pixies – Surfer Rosa

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2012/02/ziggy_stardust.php

Strokes haters need not apply

Howler

America Give Up

Rough Trade, 2012

I really want to like America Give Up, the debut LP from Minneapolis’ Howler. Really, I do. The young quintet’s full-length is chock full of super-catchy garage rock and post-punk jams, impressively tight guitar licks, and a pleasant lo-fi distortion that conjures some of Guided By Voices’ more accessible numbers, or perhaps a faster-paced Pavement. The kind of stuff that demands to be played loud and often. Not surprisingly, the band’s 2011 EP, This One’s Different, was universally lauded, and NME went as far as to name Howler the third-best new band of that year. So what’s the problem?

NPR, in a feature on the band, noted several other groups that sounded like Howler, the first being labelmates The Strokes. The comparison couldn’t be more apt. The more I replayed America Give Up, the more it felt like I was listening to an early Strokes album, and not a particularly outstanding one. Most of the songs are inundated with the same hi-hat heavy, rapid and syncopated drum rhythms, predictable chord progressions, the slightly distorted and deeply intoned vocals we’ve all heard before. Tracks like “Pythagorean Fearem” and “Free Drunk” are dead ringers for Strokes demos that would have probably been relegated to B-sides in favor of something just a little more interesting. Lead singer Jordan Gatesmith (named one of the 50 Coolest People of 2011 by NME) sports a delivery that is, at its best, vaguely powerful if not a little understated. At its worst, he sounds like an even more forced faux-British mash-up of Julian Casablancas and Brandon Flowers on Vicodin, doling out relatively uncreative musings on teenage neuroticism: “I hate the way I talk / And I hate the way I write / Sometimes it's better to stay in bed / Sometimes it's better to stay out all night.” I guess what I’m getting at is the reason I liked The Strokes’ early work is because it felt so fresh and authentic; these were truly gritty New York cats whose innovative music was the inevitable and unstoppable byproduct of the streets in which they traveled. By so greatly emulating a band that is certainly a major influence, these five fresh-faced Midwestern lads are only diminishing the talent they clearly possess.

But I’m not dismissing the album as a total cheap knock-off. The best songs – and they are gems – are the ones that diverge the most from the formula. The seductively slow-moving “Too Much Blood” one-ups many of The Flaming Lips’ coolest, more darkly ethereal moments in the 90s. “Back Of Your Neck” is a raucous, falsetto-friendly surf-rock-meets-power-pop good time who’d undoubtedly be the popular kid at any party. No, the LP isn’t bad, and most fans of the indie persuasion will find it enjoyable, if not moderately addictive. But I’m more intrigued by what Howler does next, if the band can find its own voice and build on the big-time potential that surfaces only periodically on America. It’s a start boys, now let’s get to work!

but I don't want brain damage

The Flaming Lips have always been a band that eschews conventionality and categorization. From the group’s quirky, acid-punk indie releases in the 80s to its transition from guitar-heavy alternafunk to sonically ambitious trippy studio syphonika in the 90s and 2000s, the vibe has remained as consistently unpredictable as it has stayed awesome. That the Lips are still, after three decades, putting out a steady stream of innovative work and touring relentlessly is not as noteworthy as the fact that they’ve put out more music in the last 12 months than anybody. That’s right, in terms of sheer hours of music (probably more than 35) they are the most prolific. This kind of output is ridiculous, but the way its been released is innovative on an insane level, even for a band that features duct-taped spaceships, human balloons, 20-foot-tall digital vaginas-slash-doors and three-feet-long synthetic hands as part of its standard stage act.

A vague January2011 promise of one song per month exploded into a constantly churning neo-psychedelic machine, as, starting in March, the Lips released, in monthly succession: the EP “Flaming Lips 2011: The Flaming Lips with Neon Indian”; the "Gummy Song Skull" EP, a seven pound skull made of gummy bear material with a gummy brain-slash-flashdrive; the EP "The Flaming Lips with Prefuse 73”; a live-in-studio recording of the band's 1999 album "The Soft Bulletin" on a flashdrive embedded in a marijuana-flavored brain inside a strawberry flavored gummy skull (as well as a best-of compilation entitled "Everyone You Know Someday Will Die" put together by drummer Kliph Scurlock); the "Gummy Song Fetus" EP, which consists of three songs on a flashdrive embedded in a bubblegum-flavored fetus made of gummy bear material; "The Flaming Lips with Lightning Bolt", a collaborative EP with experimental rock group Lightning Bolt; a six hour-long song entitled "6 Hour Song (Found a Star on the Ground” packaged with two other songs and released with a set of spinning discs with animations on them; a 24-hour song entitled "7 Skies H3" made available for purchase as a hard drive encased in an actual human skull; and a 12" EP collaboration with Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band.

Yes, they recorded a 24-hour song.  And novelty is great. Novelty is as American as Oklahoma. Gummy skulls and spinning discs are super rad. They are. But for those of us who would rather surf YouTube for free shit than purchase a $5,000 skull-slash-USB cable, we’re going to be more concerned with how the actual music sounds than how it’s packaged. And how does it sound? Is it even possible to succinctly and coherently analyze, in a single review, hour s of music made with several (vastly aesthetically different) collaborators over dozens of recording sessions in a variety of lengths and formats (live vs studio)? Yes it is, in four words: Mindfuckingly brutish yet sextacular. 

Actually it’s impossible, mostly because I’m lazy. But also because I don’t have time to imbibe all the shrooms necessary to listen to a 24, or even a 6-hour song in its entirety. I will say, though, for the casual listener who thinks “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” is cute or who finds “She Don’t Use Jelly” catchy, this is a post-Embryonic Flaming Lips that is darker, much more experimental, mostly devoid of intelligible lyrics, and only completely accessible to those with a proclivity for consuming multiple narcotics within a short time frame, or simultaneously. This is music for those who would rather tackle Pynchon than James Patterson. A slightly less snobby way of saying that this is conceptual art. And seriously, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Lips’ music has sort of mimicked the trajectory of the world at large for the last dozen or so years. From the pre-dot-com triumphant fanfare of The Soft Bulletin, to At War With the Mystics’ cable-friendly garbage spewed at a time (2006) of cheaply made foreign goods and a deceptively surging economy, to Embryonic’s crunchingly dark experimental dirge in 2009, to the seizure-inducing, haunting, eardrum-molesting maelstrom that is 2011. As if to say, “Shit is getting crazy, kids, we know, we’ll be there to hold your hand and guide you through the sins of your past and the mango-colored bliss that your future can be, if you’ll only trust us.” Abstract art was born from social and political turmoil. We need a break from straight-lines and convention, the Drudge Report blinking on the Subway-ride Kindle. An escape to the rapidly deteriorating fuzzy zones in our headspace. We must defeat the robots (hint: they hate gummy skulls).

Below are links to some of the 2011 tunes that may not require hallucinogens to be enjoyed by the average young professional, and a couple for which you might want to light up:

1. "Gummy Skull #1: Drug Chart"

2. "Is David Bowie Dying??"

3. "What Is The Light? / The Observer"

4. "Heavy Star Moving"

5. "I'm Working at NASA on Acid" *cool video

6. "Evil Minds"

A constant stream of the 24-hour song is here.

PETA Killed Jesus: Can't-Fail Holiday Playlist

Besides coma-inducing rum cider and horrific sweaters, the key to a successful holiday party is, of course, the music. A lazy host might simply throw on a David Hasselhoff or a Keith Sweat Christmas album and be done with it. But a pro understands the need for diversity -- classic rock, boy bands, the sentimental, the silly, the makeout-friendly. The best part is that you'll only need about 80 minutes of fresh holiday jams, because by that point your guests should be drooling eggnog like autistic snowmen and popping squats behind the tree. And if they aren't, you need to re-dose that cider ASAP. In no particular order, these following tunes will also help to unkill the buzz. You're welcome. (image from here.)

1. Mariah Carey / "All I Want For Christmas Is You"

This is not only one of the best things about December but also one of the catchiest songs ever recorded. This is why my girl Mariah was the unrivaled shit in the '90s. I don't care if you praise Allah, if the smoky intro and sleighbell-infused and joy-oozing beat doesn't at least make you smile, you're a horrible person and deserve only meaningless death and suffering for the rest of your Christmases and all the time. Any self-respecting playlist maker will play "All I Want" at least every four songs. 

2. The Flaming Lips / "Christmas At The Zoo"

This one's a little weird, like all The Flaming Lips' stuff, but it's endearing and pleasantly quirky, and who doesn't like rescuing animals in the name of Santa. Don't worry it's not an homage to PETA. After all, PETA killed Jesus. 

3. Bruce Springsteen / "Merry Christmas Baby"

This is the epitome of what I love about the Boss -- a testosterone-laced carol where everyone rocks out, gets laid, and feels nostalgic about it for years to come. I can envision myself getting into a bar fight with some knuckleheads in the Dirty Jerz while this song plays.


4. Peanuts Christmas / "Christmas Time Is Here"
This is better off played early in the evening before people get too drunk to feel genuine human emotions and only wants to blast "All I Want" on repeat.

5-6. Adam Sandler / "The Chanukah Song Parts 1 and 2"

I'm sorry my Hebrew friends, but you don't give me many party-friendly options. Barbra Streisand even sold you out and made a Christmas album. I think Matisyahu needs to take the initiative here, until then, we're left with...

7. James Taylor / "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"

This is when you a) locate the mistletoe, and b) find that random cousin that someone brought that's been chugging your death cider because she doesn't know anyone, and who desperately wants to make a bad decision. Let James do the rest.

8. Paul McCartney & Wings / "Wonderful Christmas Time"

In order to fill the one-Beatle quota, it's either this or John Lennon's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" which is about poor people and AIDS and other sad junk. No thanks.Caring about things is what New Years resolutions are for.

9. Frank Sinatra / "Winter Wonderland"

"Your Christmas spirit doesn't scare me, I've chunks of Elves like you in my stool!" - Santa

10. Madonna / "Santa Baby"

This sounds like it's being sung by one of Chris Hansen's jailbait minions, but it's quite conducive to drunken grinding.

11. *NSYNC / "Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays"

Don't act like this doesn't get stuck in your head every time you hear it. And check out Gary Coleman as an elf in the video, RIP.

12. South Park / "Mr. Hankey The Christmas Poo"

Everyone might not be down with this timeless South Park treasure. But if you know people who don't like South Park, why are you inviting them to your holiday party?

13. Boyz II Men / "Let It Snow"

If James Taylor fails, this is your foolproof Plan B. Unless you're already passed out in your own puke under aforementioned mistletoe.

14. Snoop Dogg ft. Nate Dogg / "Twas The Night Before Christmas"

After Grandma's in bed and the snitches have gone home, that's when you break out your festive 40 oz and candy-cane flavored blunt wraps! And the next three songs.

15. Afroman / "Violent Night"

16. Tha Dogg Pound / "I Wish"

Segue to standard non-holiday fare, or put "All I Want For Christmas" on repeat. Either way, you won't remember it.

it takes less muscles to smile than to swallow a snowball

Got a couple new reviews up. Andrew Borgstrom's Meat is All, -- another awesome Nephew of Mud Luscious Press -- at Outsider Writers Collective. This book is seriously insane, both visually and thematically and whoa dude, gave me nightmares, but good ones, the kind I wish I could always have, only problem is I think it's sold out. If you're nice, I'll lend you my copy.

 Haven't done a lot of music reviews recently, but I couldn't resist writing a few words about Diarrhea Planet's debut LP, Loose Jewels. The review is up at DeckFight, a really cool Southeastern rock blog and chapbook publisher. DP -- Punk meets pop meets just raging out and loving life. This CD will be my workout mix and my pre-party pump-up jam for months to come. 


Thanks to the editors of both websites for being nice enough to sully their screens with my words.

July Playlist: SMOGGY SUMMER

         http://www.timmcmahan.com/smog.htm

For some reason, summer always feels like the right time for obsessions. Perhaps the free time from school, the days of sun. Middle school was swimming and skateboarding, and before that building forts in the woods based on the American Boys Handbook. Or maybe it’s the things you do to get out of heat, the indoor hobbies – Legos from age 4 to 8, after that comic books, baseball cards, rocks, hieroglyphics (??), playing drums and going to DMB and Weezer shows in high school, Budweisers in 12th through 18th grade. This is the summer of Smog. Not the air pollution derived from vehicular emission from internal combustion engines and industrial fumes that react in the atmosphere with sunlight to form secondary pollutants. I mean the band/man, otherwise known as Bill Callahan. Never heard of Smog? Neither had I until a couple months ago during a feverish Wikipedia surfing session. Since then, I shit you not, I have listened to literally nothing besides this band (except for bar tunes and Chucky the Greek’s housewarming party). This has had an undeniably detrimental effect on my mental and physical wellbeing. My writing has been at its most unproductive in probably the last five years, I have become even more of a recluse, if that’s possible, seldom, if ever leaving the confines of my cave-like ground floor apartment and even cave-ier bedroom. Women have not entered the equation in what has now become an inordinate number of months. Ironically, or perhaps naturally, Smog’s themes of alienation, deconstructed relationships and an unrequited solipsism has gelled with the hermit ethos, and has prolonged it in a way that I am certainly not complaining about. Smog – in one sentence: If Leonard Cohen and Willie Nelson adopted Beck and Jandek’s illegitimate lust-spawn and taught him to self-produce in a slightly less insane and more self-awareu version of Daniel Johnston’s basement. That’s what’s up. Pseudo-country grooves, introspective minor-chord guitar jaunts, out-of-tune experimental crunch-fests,  a vocal poetry equal parts Plath, Ginsberg and Joshua Beckman. The band started as a one-guy operation in the early 90s. Bill recorded his first albums on shit-beat instruments in his basement before moving to indie studios, where the tunes were luckily still shit-beat. The star-fucking ramble can only take one so far in the way of appreciation. The playlist tracks are there for their sonic diversity (lots of choices with 12 albums to cover), but the core of the operation is the same: “Tonight I’m swimming / to my favorite island / and I don’t want to see you / swimming behind”.

1.       “Dress Sexy At My Funeral”

2.       “Chosen One”

3.       “The Hard Road”    

4.       “Hit The Ground Running”

5.       “I Break Horses”  

6.       “Your Wedding”

7.       “Held”

8.       “Cold-Blooded Old Times”

9.      “Teenage Spaceship”

10.    “37 Pushups”

11.    “Strayed”

12.    “Strawberry Rash”

13.    “Our Anniversary”

14.    “Goldfish Bowl”

15.    “I Was A Stranger”

16.    “Bathysphere”

17.    “Everything You Touch Becomes A Crutch”

WHO WE BURNIN'? (April Playlist)

Transitory early spring ghosts. Disaster-suckling fault lines. Rain, rain, rain, snow away. Big '90s throwbacks because I said so. Covers because why not. A little country-rock, sloppy pop and crappy country in this slappy country. Second time around is sweatier. Bowie for good measure. Phish, too. Who we burnin' in effigy? Jam out to these bad, bad friends.

1.   "I Just Can't Take It Anymore" / The Lemonheads

2.   "Mykel and Carli" / Weezer

3.   "Ashes to Ashes" / David Bowie

4.   "Window Licker" / Aphex Twin

5.   "Mr. Dobalina" / Del The Funky Homosapien

6.   "Beastie Revolution" / Beastie Boys

7,   "Effigy"/ Uncle Tupelo

8.   "Monkey" / Bush

9.   "AC/DC Bag (7/12/91)" / Phish

10. "Glynis" / Smashing Pumpkins

11. "Awesome Sound" / Ween

12. "As Far As I Can See" / Phantogram

13. "Please Let That Be You" / The Rentals

14. "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence" / Pavement

15. "Sexual Healing" / Soul Asylum

16. "New Style" / Beastie Boys

17. "Saturday Night" / Weezer

18. "Layin' With Linda" / The Lemonheads

19. "Waiting For My Ruca" / Sublime

20. "Hey Nineteen" / Steely Dan

21. "Salvation" / Rancid

22. "Fake Empire" / The National

23. "Out Of Touch" / Hall & Oates

24. "The Gaudy Side Of Town" / Gayngs

length: Waves, big waves.

Fuck You, Flaming Lips (And I Was So Nice To You Earlier, You Had to Go and Blow It)!!!!!

The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing The Dark Side of the Moon


"You don't need drugs to enjoy the Floyd. You need the Floyd to enjoy drugs."
- anonymous YouTube posting


Yes, I wrote a recent post about how the Flaming Lips were going to help restore music's respectability in the next decade. Yes, for all intents and purposes, they are still my favorite band putting out new material today. But why Lips, why did you have to start the decade off in the most unoriginal way possible, with a COVER ALBUM? And not just a cover album, you had to cover "DARK SIDE OF THE MOON", the most flawless forty-three consecutive minutes of musical perfection ever created. Tripped-out Wizard-of-Oz-loving college kids have probably lost more collective brain cells to this album than any other. There was no need for this travesty, and you know it.


Maybe I wouldn't be so fired up if I hadn't spent the last month and change, during the final edits for my book, listening to nothing - seriously, NOTHING - but early to mid-career Pink Floyd, non-stop. And in that time I've come to the conclusion that the Floyd were/are the most innovative, sonically adventurous, and lyrically superior band I've ever heard. (Interestingly, I made an almost identically bombastic observation about the Lips when I first started getting into them in '06) It's not that the Lips' versions of the individual songs are sub par, per se. A more uptempo, percussion driven "Breathe" is pretty kickass, the Lips' robot-synthesizer vocal effects are present - and pleasantly trippy - throughout, and Henry Rollins' spoken-word parts are maybe cooler than the originals. Stardeath and White Dwarves are a great up and coming group, and their presence is certainly felt, especially in "Time" and "Brain Damage". The point is that they're not just covering one or two songs and putting their own wacky spin on them. They're covering the entire "DARK SIDE OF THE MOON"! That's like taking a Jackson Pollock painting, buying the same color paints and flinging them onto an identical-size canvas in roughly the same splatter-patterns. No matter how "fresh" your new version might seem, there's a reason why the original sells for millions of dollars and yours looks like a three-year-old's finger-painting project. Because the Pollack is a unique masterpiece - not to be recreated.

In what can loosely be defined as Rock Music, there are a handful of classics that are not, under any circumstances, to be tampered with ("Sgt. Pepper's", "Astral Weeks", "Disintegration", and "Siamese Dream" come to mind). I would place "Dark Side" at or near the top of that list - along with every Pink Floyd release from 1967's "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" to 1979's "The Wall". Maybe the Lips' cover album is a big Fuck You to idiots like me who make lists of what albums aren't allowed to be covered. In that case, it's a giant waste of a Fuck You because the Flaming Lips wasted a lot of creative energy that they should have focused on crafting another one of their own masterpieces, along the lines of "Yoshimi" or "Embryonic".

With all that being said, I'm more than looking forward to checking out the Lips perform the entire album this summer at the Central Park SummerStage. Because as much as I fault them for attempting something as blatantly unattemptable as "Dark Side", I still understand that the psychedelic/prog rock torch has, for a couple decades now, been passed to them, that the Flaming Lips' originality and constantly evolving creative spirit is the closest we'll probably ever get to the mindfucking genius that was the Floyd.

Also, don't buy the Lips' "Dark Side" on iTunes. They don't need your ten bucks that badly. Get heady to the original.

Can The Flaming Lips Save the Next Decade? Probably Not, But Their New Album Is Pretty Freakin' Sweet!!!! (And Lady Gaga Sucks)

It was all Biggie and Miley’s fault. Blame them.

I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to be like every other self-described internet journalist (aka blogger hack that no one gives a crap about) and most of my favorite cable networks, spending the last month or three trying to find some unique, compelling way to analyze the last decade – the Two-Thousands, the Ohs, the Zeros, the Oughts, the Naughts, the Oh-Ohs – whatever you want to call it. There are already the ubiquitous Top-10 lists (Top-10 iPhone Apps, Top-10 Celebrities’ Assholes Falling Out of Their Skirts), I Love The 2000s marathons, an ever expanding collection of Skillz’ year-end raps. It seems like every Twitter-head and Facebook stalker is trying to carve out his or her own nostalgia niche. It’s not that I’m being a curmudgeon or that I don’t want to remember the past ten years. They were the best of my short life, although that’s mainly due to the fact that the 2000s corresponded with many of the events (high school, college, grad school) that are supposed to be the proverbial “BEST time of your life”. Clearly, any decade in which one receives his first hand job and hazes his first batch of screaming, blindfolded fraternity pledges in the backseat of the same beat-up ’97 Izusu Trooper has to be epic on a personal scale. However, other than my generation’s collective debauchery, a lot of shit sucked. There were a staggering number of reasons (9/11-Afghanistan-Iraq-Katrina-The Tsunami-George Bush-Bird Flu-Darfur-The Great Recession-H1N1-Jon & Kate Plus 8) why well-respected voices, from Time Magazine to Gore Vidal, decided to brand this decade as among the worst in American history.

Figuring out just how awesome or lame it was will take years, more decades, hundreds of magazine articles, blog posts and PhD theses. Our overall understanding of the 2000s will change again and again. Being the passive-aggressive slacker fiction writer that I was, I saw no problem in letting the super-nerds tackle this one as I lay back in my allegorical cave creating worlds of my own.

That is, until I heard Miley Cyrus and the Notorious B.I.G.’s vocals on the same track. Granted, it was just an unofficial remix/mash-up of Cyrus’ “hit” song “Party in the U.S.A.” where the verses have been changed to Biggie’s, from his old-school classic “Party and Bullshit”, mixed by some herb in his parents’ basement. And it was actually pretty catchy, too (until I heard it at every bar I went to for a week). Apparently a lot of people agree because the song has more than 1.4 million hits on YouTube, and has been a fixture on party playlist sites like fratmusic.com for a while. Maybe I’m getting older and can’t simply enjoy this song the way it’s meant to be enjoyed – twelve beers deep dancing on top of a pong table and throwing drinks at scantily clad ladies who look like J-WOWW and Snookers – or maybe I’m just thinking too much, as usual. But to me the song represents everything wrong with the current music industry, and maybe more so with the people (Generation Y) who have been listening to the music made during the last ten years.

One of the easiest ways to start to define a decade is to look at its music. Politics, fashion, culture and current events should all be reflected in what the kids are listening to. It is impossible to think about the tumultuous, radical sixties without picturing the Beatles looking all hippied-out or Jimi Hendrix jamming his soul to thousands of Woodstockers. Same with the nineties. No one who grew up then will ever forget all the disaffected, flannel-wearing grunge rockers and their rejection of ’80s excess, or the racial chaos that fueled the passionate monologues of West Coast gangster rappers.

But what about the 2000s? The introduction of file sharing and beat-making programs like FruityLoops has cheapened everything about music, has made it accessible to the point of meaninglessness. It has been commoditized like never before. Any knucklehead with a computer can make “quality” sounding tunes in his basement without any real talent besides being able to figure out which samples from REAL songs go best together. Indeed, much of what passes for music today is really just lyrics and riffs from other, better songs that have been digitally combined to form nothing more than a reusable, throw-away product. Yes, much of art and literature borrows from past works. One could argue that nothing new has been created since the ancient Greeks. But this music is not art. This is Wal-M(art). Don’t believe me? Compare rappers from the nineties to those of the 2000s. Tupac and Biggie were the mouthpiece of a generation. Auto-Tune-infested morons like T-Pain and Kanye sound like robots taking a shit. Pop Bottles! Fuck Bitches! Buy rims! We have no soul! Even popular music used to be at least occasionally multi-layered. Recently some gay friends of mine tried to explain to me that Lady Gaga is not only the Madonna of “our” generation, but is possibly more influential to today’s youth than the Material Girl ever was. If this is even remotely true, someone find me a shotgun because I’m about to pull a Hemingway. Is this what we’ve come to? Is it true, as one of the characters in my forthcoming novel puts it, that the 2000s are “a nameless amorphous creature, a vacuum, a sterile computer-chip refuse pile that’s allergic to any specific attitude, to any real passion”?

You may be wondering where The Flaming Lips come in to all of this. Weren’t they in the title? I’m so glad you asked, friend, because The Lips’ newest album, Embryonic, is one of the few musical things I’ve heard recently that has given me hope for a brighter tomorrow.

Although thematically similar to previous releases (Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, The Soft Bulletin), Embryonic is a stark departure musically for Wayne Coyne and Company. The sound is harder, more raw, yet pulsing with unparalleled grandeur and cybernetic beauty. Imagine if members of the Beatles, Joy Division, latter-day Smashing Pumpkins, the Clash, the RZA and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs all got together in the 23rd century and smoked some serious Magical Martian Red Skunk – this is what would come out. If T-Pain sounds like a robot taking a shit, Embryonic sounds like that same robot making love to Miles Davis’ granddaughter in a psychedelic field of android poppies while electric-faced cherubs wail the existential blues.

Perhaps it’s the addition of new drummer Kliph Spurlock, but raucous power jams like “Convinced of the Hex,” “Silver Trembling Hands,” and “Watching the Planets” rock harder and louder than anything since The Lips’ mid-nineties guitar-driven line-ups. But the beats are also funkier, more jam-dance friendly, as any Disco Biscuits fan or Phish phreak will attest. But they also perfectly blend in their softer side with Sigur Ròs-esque space ballads like “The Impulse” and “Gemini Syringes”.

As always, Wayne’s unique songwriting ranges from the startlingly introspective and the philosophical to the obscure and downright silly. There is maybe a bit more darkness and desperation present in tracks like “The Ego’s Last Stand”, where Wayne sings, “The only way out / Is destroying all traces / Oh, destroying yourself /There’s no way back / It’s complete devastation / Oh, there’s no way out” or in (arguably the album’s masterpiece) “See the Leaves” where he laments, “She cannot pretend / To believe that life / Really has no end”. But, in this collection of yins and yangs, there is also an undeniable streak of positive energy and hope, such as in the smile-inducing “Watching The Planets,” where we believe Wayne when he proclaims “See, the sun’s gonna rise / And take your fears away / Like the soft tit of the motherbrain” and the culturally appropriate “If” where we agree and hope in our hearts that “People are evil, it’s true / But on the other side / They can be gentle too / If they decide.”

Other highlights include the bombastic synth-fest “Worm Mountain" featuring MGMT and the happily bizarre “I Can Be A Frog” in which Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (and the Where The Wild Things Are soundtrack) helps out by making animal noises through a telephone.

There is a general consensus by hardcore fans that 1999’s groundbreaking The Soft Bulletin was the band’s musical and artistic apex. I would argue that Embryonic not only approaches this gem but outshines it. And I’m not alone. Paste Magazine described the album as "a wonderfully weird parade of sonic delights: an arresting consummation of the Lips' two-and-a-half decade career,” and The Record Review lauded The Lips as "one of the few acts left that stills dares to be original, inspired and off-center in such a mainstream musical climate." Couldn’t have said it better myself.

So take that, Miley, Gaga, Kanye and the rest of you boring, self-obsessed , ear-bleed-inducing leaches! Biggie, please do not roll over in your grave just yet. There is hope.

(However, Miley, when you turn 18, please call or Twitter me @ChrisVola)

Finally, looking ahead: 2010 promises to be another spacey, brain-bending neo-psychedelic balloon ride for The Lips as the band has just released a song-for-song cover of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, featuring the likes of Stardeath and White Dwarves and Henry Rollins. So get your glow-sticks and confetti guns, kids, and prepare your faces to MELT! As for me, my biggest New Year’s resolution is to stay POSITIVE and HAPPY, something made a lot easier by the fact that the Decade from Hell is over and bands like The Flaming Lips have not only survived its aftermath, but continue to thrive. Stay up, God Bless, and please say a prayer for Haiti and everyone hurting right now. Peace.

Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo

Release date: January 11, 2008 (Geffen Records)

All I can say is that this collection has been LONG overdue. A selection of raw, emotional four-track recordings from Weezer's neurotic and introverted front-man, Rivers Cuomo. Some of these songs ("Blast Off!", "Lover in the Snow", "Chess") were available for free download in the early 2000s. These dark, intense, grainy musings on loneliness, longing, lost love, death, and outer space quickly became my favorite tunes in the entire Weezer catalogue and got me through a good deal of self-inflicted (and now vaguely comical) high school angst, proms and pimples.

Cuomo recorded most of the tracks on "Alone" in his L.A. basement from 1992-2007, playing all of the instruments and singing all of the vocals in most cases. Highlights include the sad, soft piano and clarinet ballad "Longtime Sunshine," a track Cuomo resisted putting online for nearly a decade due to its profoundly personal (and borderline suicidal) lyrics. "Blast Off!" is a classic, hard-rockin' Weez demo about a hedonistic, alcoholic starship crew on a desperate mission to save the planet Normis. On the mostly acoustic "Chess," Cuomo compares a difficult relationship to the board game.

My favorite track is "Lover in the Snow," an electric guitar and tamborine masterpiece about - what else? - a former lover of Cuomo's entangled in a shady, allegorical snowy glen with another man. In moments of joy and heartbreak in my own life, the song has always resonated and haunted me with the simple, yet soul-wrenching power of its lyrics and minor chords.

This album is a must-have for any die-hard Weezer fan and a soothing cure for anyone suffering a lonely fracture of the spirit.

http://www.amazon.com/Alone-Home-Recordings-Rivers-Cuomo/dp/B000Y30ODQ