Tuesday, December 16, 2008

The Boys Consider Time Magazine's Picks for Best Song and Best Book of the Year! / Plus, Richard's Hipster Pick of the Day!

The boys love year-end top ten lists, but of course no music list can be considered credible unless Kanye West, the "voice of his generation," is at the top of it. Luckily, Time's best song of the year is Kanye's "Love Lockdown," which they describe as follows: "Singing in a monotone, West sounds ghostly as he recounts his romantic failures in brutal detail. But then humanity, in the form of Japanese taiko drums, arrives to whip up a dance song about misery."

Chip: "When I'm dancing to a rap song, I do not want to think about my 'romantic failures' and 'misery.' I just want to zone out and grind on some bitches. Plus, we all know that the true song of the year is Beyonce's 'Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)'".

Richard: "Time goes on to describe the song as 'the most interesting musical experiment of the year,' but surely this is only because they haven't heard that cute little local hipster Farmer's Ball winning chick play the ukulele."

Does Time's best-song list include anything at all worthy of hipster-listening? As a matter of fact, it does. Checking in at number five (just below Li'l Wayne's "A Milli") is "White Winter Hymnal" by the Fleet Foxes, which they describe as a "chorale roundelay about a school trip to the woods" and "a miniature tale...as quaint and precious as a Joseph Cornell box".

Chip: "I hope I never hear this song."

Richard: "I often put it on mix-CD's."

And what is the best novel of the year? Time says it is Chilean novelist/poet Roberto Bolano's posthumously published, 900 page opus called 2666 ("Baffling, maddening, difficult, violent, obscene, overindulgent and way too long, 2666 is also the best novel of the year").

Richard: "I hope that one day this blog is described in exactly that fashion."
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A band calling themselves Pet Comfort and claiming to hail from "Newtopia, Missouri" hits the Record Bar in KC tonight, and their MySpace page describes their sound as "acousmatic."

Chip: "Newtopia, Missouri, is likely a play on Newtonia, Missouri, suggesting the idea of 'utopia.' But there is no utopia in Missouri, let me assure you. Now as for the term "acousmatic," I can only assume it's a combination of 'acoustic' and 'asthmatic,' suggesting nasal-voiced folkies like Bob Dylan."

Richard: "The actual definition of 'acousmatic' is much more dull, but go look it up if you must... and make sure to check out this band tonight. They sound very warm and fuzzy, perfect to warm the ice-cold heart of a hipster on a chilly winter evening."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I actually bought 2666 for the wife for Christmas!

-I expect it shall warm her on the plane ride to Frisco!

Anonymous said...

It's long enough for many, many plane rides (and I think one entire section consists of forensics reports about dead women). Light airport reading, for sure!

Anonymous said...

"But then humanity, in the form of Japanese taiko drums..."

Has Time been reading lawrence.com? When's the last time "humanity" arrived in the "form of..drums"? Shouldn't "humanity" have to arrive in the "form of"...um...HUMANS? And I'd love to get a hold of the liner notes for said song to see "Taiko Drums" listed. Or is that just a MIDI patch on a keyboard (thus making the aforementioned quotation even more ridiculous).

And my music has sometimes been labeled "acousmic," which is much cooler and sexual than "acousmatic," which seems to imply that the band will not actually be there tonight, only playing their music from hidden speakers. Avant-garde? I think not. At least not as avant-garde as Todd Snider's "Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues"! "Silence...music's original alternative...roots grunge."

Anonymous said...

Everyone's taking a cue from Pitchfork these days (and I do believe the LC needs to try its hand at writing such nonsense one of these days!).