Sunday, February 15, 2009
All your hard-rock is belong to me...
It is time. People discover music in various ways; from scouring the internet for hours at a time, reading magazines, or even listening to the radio. This Top 5 is for none of those people. What we have here are the Top 5 albums that Ian Averill has forever ruined for Ryan Eyestone. Without necessarily trying, Mr. Averill has forever changed the way music is listened to in one Bangor music store. People run for the hills when Joanna Newsom's angelic voice grazes their ears; they duck and cover when Conor Oberst serenades his way into their brains. No one has been more affected by this epidemic then Ryan Eyestone. Mr. Eyestone has been seen on his roof, throwing cds and screaming into the black night. Literally THOUSANDS of artists have been ruined by Mr. Averill, and here's Ryan's chance to let him know just which of these were the most heart-breaking. So here we go, 5 pieces of joy Ian has taken from Ryan, which will never be returned.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Ok, i'm posting first & am going to attempt a guess.
ReplyDeletep.s. Go to hell man.
1. The Hold Steady - Boys & girls in america
2. Elvis Perkins - Ash Wednesday
3. The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
4. The National - Boxer
5. Coming soon......The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love.
alternate: 6. A very special album.....I'm Not Telling by Get Bent Ian. (hehe)
Where to begin...oh man. I've spent a few days mulling this over, and I think I'm ready to roll. Ian's initial guess was pretty good.
ReplyDelete1. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
This, for me, is a band listened to in small doses. That is not an indication of a band being "less than", it just means they won't be making it onto the desert island list anytime soon. The "small doses" rule goes into effect for me when I like certain aspects of an artist, but know that those aspects can easily be driven into the ground, or, god forbid, those aspects I enjoy can be crushed into pulp by other elements of the music that suck balls in a subtle manner; elements that only arise over time until they form a deafening, oppressive black fog. This is exactly what has happened with the Hold Steady, and this album. The things that I originally found appealing, such as the slow build of "first night" into a simple summary of the entire album, the catchy opening lines of "chillout tent" and the dead-on description of party sluts in "you can make him like you" have been slowy demolished and driven to the background by overpowering, obnoxious elements. I can't help but be
annoyed that one of the characters in the ongoing fictional narrative is named Charlemagne. That's just retarded. I imagine the character in real life wearing platform shoes and an army jacket with a White Zombie patch on the back. I'd want to punch that motherfucker in the teeth.
I also have started to doubt that Craig Finn, the Hold Steady's principal lyricist, has ever been to a cool party. I can see this dude spending the last 15 years playing Weezer acoustic covers in pubs, drinking Coors light and peeping eyefuls of chubby girls' white-turned-yellow thongs riding up over their tramp-stamps. ALSO. Why does he *need* to end every line on an up-note? I used to find that unique, but now......not so much. This band is fucking dead to me.
2. Elvis Perkins - Ash Wednesday
"Small doses" rule in full effect, once again. Any love I may have once had for the eloquent tear-jerker content in "sleep sandwich" has been fucked to shit by that one, colossal shit-fucking line referencing the hovering ghosts of cappuccino and Zsa-Zsa Gabor. AND THEN AGAIN IN FUCKING FRENCH! First off, cappuccino doesn't have a ghost, as it was never a living entity, and it is still culturally significant enough to be
considered alive, if Perkins was going for some sort of metaphor. Next, sure, let's name-drop the most obnoxious fucking name we can thing of. ZSA ZSA. That's sound great on the album. I guess it was either that, or the ghost of Boney M. ANd then, why the fuck do you need to repeat the line in French through a speakerbox?! Was this guy a theater major in school? I know his dad was like 65% gay, but fuck, man. This album
is fucking dead to me.
3. The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
This was just unfortunate. I'll be honest, I was over this band before I even met Ian. I had enjoyed the first album when it came out, and didn't really both with the Neon Bible. The whole "I don't want to work in my father's house" line always rubbed me the wrong way, because the singer for this band grew up rich as fuck. His folks have a fucking summer house in Bar Harbor. So this album comes out, with all these blue-collar songs as if his house got caught in a twister and he landed in Springsteen's "Nebraska". I know it's fine for an artist to write
songs about a variety of subjects, but this always just struck me as slumming. Also, none of these songs are memorable to me in the least. If you asked me to sing a song off this album right now, I wouldn't be able to. That is the minimal extent to which I am emotionally affected by this album. So basically, this album was already fucking dead to me, it came back to life, and now it's taunting me from the chained-shut
root-cellar door. "Dead by dawn, dead by dawn." If I have to listen to this shit again, yeah.
4. Joanna Newsom - entire catalog
Talented harpist, bitch needs to shut the fuck up. Her squeaky, abrasive LONG AS FUCK songs about monkeys and bears as metaphor for labias and clitorii kill me. "Clam Crab Cockle Cowrie" has a certain timeless nature to it, but I don't know anymore. I could listen to her maybe once every 2 years. At most. If I'm not reading Nylon...I don't want to listen to Nylon. This musician is fucking dead to me.
5. The Decemberists - entire catalog *
Colin Meloy. What the fuck. You were born in 1974, yet you sing songs about shit that would make Charlie Chaplin's corpse feel old. I guess we should just be grateful you spent your teen years buried in an encyclopedia, instead of a Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook....or, GOD FORBID, a pussy. If I have been aware of the shitty pirate/chinaman songs this pantywaste would be busting out when I was 1 years old in 1985, I would
have gladly tracked down 11-year old Colin Meloy and taken a baby mustard shit in his pimply mouth. Why does he have all these songs about people' pants falling down? I feel like I'm listening to the imaginary soundtrack to the BBC classic "Are You Being Served?". "Any good sales today? Knickers are coming down in aisle 3! (cue laugh track)". I've also taken a hatred to his need to end every sentence with "oy". What
is the affectation he's spinning his words through? A tailor from Oliver Twist? An Errol Flynn highway robber? Gene Shalit? Colin Meloy has single-handedly made the history of the world pretentious. I can never again talk about anything pre-1980 without feeling like a total dork ass. Barnum and Bailey? Nope. Christopher Columbus? Forget it. Ben Franklin and a cartoon mouse flying a kite in a storm? Nada. My grandfather's REAL LIFE secret hide-out in the Pyrenees? NO WAY. RUINED. This band is fucking dead to me.
* lone exception is the song "Devil's Elbow", as rendered by either Meloy solo, or Tarkio. This song slays.
Ladies & Gentlemen (who am I kidding, just Gentlemen).....Ryan Eyestone. :)
ReplyDeleteP.S. Thanks for making Habibi the Invisible Camel an unwelcoming blog to young children.
Young children? Pfft, decent Americans can't even read this drivel!
ReplyDelete