Chance the Rapper, Acid Rap

The second mixtape by this young Chicago native seems custom-built to conquer summer. Chance’s liquid flow, the sunshine-psych samples (lifted from classic hip-hop tracks by the likes of Tribe Called Quest and Slum Village, as well as a nod to an early Kanye mixtape cut on “Good Ass Intro”), the playful lyricism all come together to create a slow, humid, easy June late afternoon feel. Even on the album’s darker, more serious tracks like “Acid Rain” and “Pusha Man,” you never stop feeling that Chance is having a ridiculous amount of fun. Think of Acid Rap as good kid, m.A.A.d city’s lighthearted younger brother.

Savages, Silence Yourself

Jehnny Beth & Co. continue to ape Joy Division and Siouxsie & the Banshees with pitch-perfect accuracy, but as I mentioned in my coverage of their CMJ show at Mercury Lounge, this is in no way a bad thing. What Savages lack in originality they more than make up for in propulsive intensity. The songs collected here are highly addictive, especially album opener (and sort-of title track, if you think abou it) “Shut Up,” lead single “Husbands,” and my personal favorite, the exhausted urbanite polemic “City’s Full.”

Various, Garage Swim

Every so often, stoner cartoon mavens Adult Swim take it upon themselves to reassert their coolness with these free compilations. Garage Swim is among the best of these. Jumping from JEFF the Brotherhood’s stoner metal to Mikal Cronin’s anthemic power pop to the Gories back-to-basics blues rock to King Tuff’s synth-assisted goofiness, this mix shows the breadth of modern garage in a similar fashion to Lenny Kaye’s seminal ’72 compilation, Nuggets.

Primal Scream, More Light

About once a decade, Primal Scream takes a break from being depressingly mediocre to make a great album. There was 1991’s Screamadelica, then 2000’s XTRMNTR, and now here’s 2013’s More Light. Leading off with the a-bit-on-the-nose single “2013,” the band proceeds to cannibalize the best parts of their past to make something new and forward thinking. While it isn’t  a concept album, the record has a specific sense of flow and narrative arc, almost as if it was a soundtrack. Unsurprisingly, More Light was helmed by producer David Holmes, who is perhaps most famous for his brilliant, old school soundtracks for Steven Soderbergh.

Daft Punk, Random Access Memories

Oh, who am I kidding. The Album of the Summer’s gonna be Random Access Memories. Have I listened to it yet? Naw, it’s not out for like another two weeks. But shit, yo; have you heard “Get Lucky?” If you haven’t, where the hell you been?  Nile Rodgers comes on like it’s 1977, Pharrell makes himself relevant for the first time since Clones dropped, an the Daft Punky bunch proved that they could still bring it after eight years of radio silence. The rest of the album could be the sound of insects eating and it’d still be one of the greatest records released all year. Heck, I’d be perfectly fine with the whole album just being this:

And that’s this week’s NTTOD, you lovely lovelies. Follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc, if you’re so inclined.

First of all, credit where credit ‘s due: the Dark Side of Lite FM is the brainbaby of my friend Edward Julian O’Hara Bonilla. Dude is a pop music genius the likes of which has only graced this beautiful world a handful of times. He’s the true arbiter of what is and what isn’t DSLFM, and he’s an ornery bastard, so he’s probably going to find this playlist and the accompanying analysis idiotic and way off base, but still: this one’s for you, Eeje.

The concept of cool that was manufactured by the Punk “movement” did some weirdass things to music criticism and to pop music in general. Punk threw a clusterbomb of contradictions into the heart of cultural discourse by claiming that it was divorced from the influence of that which came before while being heavily derived from the roots of rock ‘n’ roll and by saying that it was anti-consumerist and anti-pop. In reality, there’s virtually nothing poppier than punk: two minute infectious verse-chorus-verse missives that fill teenagers with the desire to throw themselves at each other? Yeah.

Accompanying this was the idea of “effortless cool;” the jaded irreverence and slick cynicism that can only be perfected by those who haven’t really experienced all that much. Anybody caught trying to do anything besides trying to look like they’re not trying was excommunicated from the church of cool. Roxy Music, Fleetwood Mac and ELO were demonized for their ambition and sincerity.

These days, those bands are regarded as the awesome they were, and in these post-ironic times, sincerity has crawled its way back into the indie mainstream. But there were a lot of groups and artists in the ’70s and ’80s just weren’t interested in screwing around with the punk conception of cool, folks that weren’t ashamed of excess or mushiness. You still find these songs on easy listening radio in dentists offices and cluttering up the jukeboxes of “Old Man Bars” (as people who don’t actually know what dive bars are have taken to calling dives); these slickly produced, sometimes saccharine tunes that seem to lack any sense of self-awareness or meaning. Until, you know, you listen to them. Whether it’s Gilbert O’ Sullivan’s flirtations with suicide, 10cc satirizing the concept of love, Peter Gabriel condemning the murder of Steven Biko by the South African government, or Don Henley painting a horrifying portrait of news media, we find a grimness and feeling that outpunks the headiest Minor Threat 7″. This is music that’s not afraid of being uncool, and as a result, it goes deep into understanding the gamut of human emotions. This, ladies and gents, is the Dark Side of Lite FM.

1. Sister Golden Hair – America

2. Hello It’s Me – Todd Rundgren

3. Don’t Answer Me – The Alan Parsons Project

4. I’m Not In Love – 10cc

5. Eminence Front – The Who

6. Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song) – Billy Joel

7. Logical Song – Supertramp

8. Dirty Laundry – Don Henley

9. Life’s What You Make It – Talk Talk

10. Broken Wings – Mr. Mister

11. Don’t Dream It’s Over – Crowded House

12. Alone Again (Naturally) – Gilbert O’Sullivan

13. Mind Games – John Lennon

14. Baker Street – Gerry Rafferty

15. Biko – Peter Gabriel

16. Don’t Forget Me – Harry Nilsson

That’s it for this week, but be sure to leave any stray thoughts in the comments. What are your favorite DSLFM songs that we missed? Why does this playlist not have a single female voice on it? Isn’t that kinda weird? We certainly think so! Comment or hit up Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc.

“I like everything except Rap and Country.”

God, is there a more phrase as simultaneously innocuous and incendiary as that one? It’s the pop music equivalent of “I’m not racist, but…;” a phrase oft repeated by the woefully underinformed and culturally stagnant when they want to appear more evolved than they actually are. By saying that phrase, you are marking yourself as a milquetoast middle of the road dingus bereft of imagination and taste. You have time for everything, except for Nas and Patsy Cline? Fuck you. You’re going to miss everything cool and die angry.

I’m letting myself get worked up about this, which is silly, because A. It’s only pop music (but I like it) and B. You don’t really hear the phrase bandied about as much anymore. Hip-Hop has dominated the mainstream for decades at this point, and all but the most adamant of holdouts has entered the fold. But Country, well, that’s a different story.

The thing that made the utterer’s of the dread sentence uncomfortable about Hip-Hop is the same thing that still makes them uncomfortable about country: it’s music with a strong, complex cultural identity. Rap and Country exist outside a number of folks’ frames of reference, especially if they’re young white middle class Yankees. People hate leaving their comfort zones, and so they glom onto the worst aspects of the Other as a reason to reject them (see: any time someone uses the “Bitches & Hoes” or “Jingoistic, Xenophobic Bullshit” arguments).

There still is, by and large, a cultural embargo on Country above the Mason Dixon. When it manages to be successful up here, it’s usually been smuggled in as “Indie Folk” or “Americana” by groups like Deer Tick and songwriters like Alela Diane, or disguised as “Utter Trash” by the likes of Mumford & Sons. People feel the need to avoid the label to seem palatable to the northern market.

Nashville’s Caitlin Rose, on the other hand, could not give a half-pint of piss about what you think; the 25-year-old singer has no qualms about being Country. Since her 2008 debut EP, Dead Flowers, she’s been singing chain smoking, hard drinking sagas of heartbreak, songs that could, and do, rub shoulders with the likes of Waylon Jennings and Patsy Cline. Her second album, The Stand-In, dropped earlier this month, and its clean, almost glossy production has the balls to flirt with the Music Row mainstream. A friend of mine from Nashville called the record an “Indie Linda Rondstat Revival,” and she’s not wrong.

Rose’s music is simultaneously sweet and shitkicking; bright and gloomy. In short, it’s damn good Country. For a little taste, check out her cover of Alex Turner/Artic Monkeys’ “Piledriver Waltz:”

Neat, right? If that tickled your fancy, you’re in luck: Caitlin Rose is gonna be in town for a few days, playing Park Slope’s Union Hall on Saturday and Mercury Lounge in the LES on Monday. By all accounts she’s a great live show. Check it out.

And that’s this week’s dose of Now Take Them Out Devils. If you’re interested in hearing more from Simon Lazarus Vasta, you can follow him on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc, or nip down to the Mercury Lounge show on Monday and buy him a drink or twelve. Join us next week for a meditation on the dark side of Lite FM….

Missed part one? Read it here.

When The Next Day was announced on Bowie’s 66th birthday, I had long since given up any hope of hearing new material. It was as if a limb I had amputated years ago had suddenly reappeared one morning; the phantom pains I had gone through such lengths to banish merely a prelude to a second act. I was surprised and excited, but also skeptical. The song that accompanied the announcement, “Where Are We Now,” was good, but Bowie sounded old, tired, morose (which was odd, because a number of the lyrics sounded like they had been written by an undergrad who’d just returned from a semester abroad in Berlin). I was terrified that The Next Day would be crap, or even worse, that it would be just okay, a pleasant-smelling brainfart released after a decade-long hiatus.

But it wasn’t either of those things. The Next Day is great. In the context of the album, “Where Are We Now” reveals itself to be a song that sounds worn out and exhausted by design; a worn out, scratched up memory of Bowie’s time in Berlin. And it’s not typical; in places, Bowie sounds as virile as ever, such as when he’s barking at the celestial celebrities of “The Stars (Are Out Tonight).”*

Bowie is usually at his most interesting when he’s a thief, swiping the aesthetics and structure from everything from Krautrock to Philly soul, from Industrial music to Marc Bolan stomp; yet his main point of reference on The Next Day, however, seems to be himself. The album is, in a way, a complex, interwoven history of the Bowie cannon, Ziggy Stardust tempered by the Berlin Triptych, the Tin Machine years rubbing shoulders with the futurefolk of Space Oddity, Earthling‘s breakbeats sharing a roof with the no-nonsense pop of the eighties. Bowie even sees fit to have the ghosts of “Five Years’” remorseful drums haunt the end of “You Feel So Lonely You Could Die.” The exception to this rule seems to be album closer “Heat,” which cribs from everything Scott Walker’s been doing the past two decades; that being said, Bowie’s been ripping off Walker since the late sixties, so maybe cribbing from Walker is part of what makes Bowie Bowie.

Lyrically, it’s Bowie’s greatest release since 1.Outside. His songwriting is generally at its strongest when it’s at its most macabre and gothy, and boy, is this a gloomy record. There are tales of school shootings, lynch mobs, young men sent off to fight pointless wars, disaffected models dying on the vine, and the hollow deification of Hollywood heroes. The writing is nuanced and smart, and one gets the impression that the songs were made because Bowie legitimately felt he had something to say. The only track that really falls flat is “(You Will) Set the World On Fire,” which, though a beautifully written meditation on the Greenwich Village folk scene of the sixties, sounds like a boring, schlocky late period single forced into the world by someone who peaked decades ago.

That’s not who Bowie is. That’s not what this album is. The Next Day is the signpost for Bowie’s next, and perhaps last, permutation: the mortal. He is no longer an alien, a nightmare only seen in the peripheral, an undying song and dance man with perfect hair and the Devil’s smile; he is human, and just like the rest of us, he is dying. David Bowie and I both made the assumption that a Bowie that was not pure myth, not pure music and pop and spectacle, would be in some way wanting, in some way less effective. I’m happy to report that we were wrong.

*goddammit, that video is an article unto itself. Suffice it to say that it would be perfect if it weren’t for the shitclumsy use of Adobe After Effects at the beginning and end.

And that just about wraps it up for this week. If it tickles your fancy, follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc

On the first of March it was announced that The Next Day, the first new David Bowie album in ten years, could be streamed in full on iTunes, a week and a half before the record’s actual U.S. release. When I read this, my skin crawled and my stomach curdled. It was too soon. I wasn’t ready.

I had become a Bowie devotee at age fourteen, back when it wasn’t uncommon for the man to release something every couple of years. I have this distinct memory of sitting on a park bench in Stuy Town one chilly afternoon, popping a used copy of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars into my CD player for the first time, and having my little mind blown wide open (I also remember I was reading Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens at the time, which also blew my mind, but in a completely different way and to a slightly lesser extent… but that’s another story for another time). I spent the rest of my high school years assembling the Bowie discography, jumping from glam rock to plastic soul to drum ‘n’ bass to avant-garde Burroughsian experimentation. Bowie could be everywhere, try his hand at anything; and what’s more, he was always making more. My third Bowie album was 2002′s fantastic Heathen, a return to form after his less-than-successful ’90s work (some of which is actually fantastic, but damn, another story, another time) and a critical smash. It was followed up a little over a year later with the less-good Reality, but still. David Bowie made music, and I was never gonna run out. Ever. Bowie was an ageless immortal gifted to the people of earth to create and inspire.

Except for the part where he, y’know, wasn’t. Within a few years of Reality‘s release, the Thin White Duke had all but stopped performing, and the vague promises of new material became vaguer and vaguer before completely petering out. Bowie attempted to stay relevant for a bit by playing with Arcade Fire during the 2005 Fashion Rocks event and providing backup vocals for TV On the Radio’s “Province,” but soon after he just quietly stepped out of the spotlight he’d been sitting under for his entire adult life. Some pointed to a heart attack and the consequential surgery and recovery as the culprit behind Bowie’s departure; I blame a lollipop.

I felt abandoned. I was resentful. How dare this man, this artist who was admittedly getting up there in years make a rational and well intentioned decision to safeguard his physical and mental well-being? How dare he stop making me beautiful things? I found I was drifting away, listening to Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) only once a month instead of the standard twice a week. David Bowie had been my first big musical love, but the honeymoon was over. Sure, every once in a while I’d find myself getting excited about Bowie again, maybe after listening to an album for the first time in a few years, or discovering an alternate version of “Moonage Daydream” I’d never heard before, or discussing the creation of a Bowie tarot deck with a friend, but it was never the same. An unproductive and reclusive Bowie was a mortal Bowie, and a mortal Bowie just wasn’t as important to me as the myth he had built himself into. Or so I thought, because I was stupid.

Join us again tomorrow for part 2 of NTTOD’s The Next Day Review. Follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc

In an early January column, I made some recommendations for the rest of the classical music season. I said that Lorin Maazel would be conducting Don Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera. Some performances were bound to be “great,” others could be “humdrum.” You had to “pick your night carefully.” As it happened, I picked a superb night.
You could complain about Maazel, and I will. Some tempos were sluggish. There was some classic Maazelian overmanagement, (particularly in the matter of ritards). The great tenor-baritone duet in Act II had some internal strength, but not enough external strength. It fell flat. And yet
Maazel knows his Verdi. He showed a sure sense of the architecture of the work. He paced wisely. He did not ask more of the music than warranted, at any point. He always had the entire opera in mind. He brought out huge tensions, and fascinatin’ rhythms. He imparted a little jazz, as he can to almost any score. Eboli’s first aria, the Veil Song, is often a nothing. Not from Maazel, who made it an exciting Spanish dance. He likes to dance—through his baton, and sometimes on a podium, literally. The meeting between King Philip and the Grand Inquisitor was riveting. Spellbinding.
For many years, Maazel-bashing has been a popular sport in this town. During Act III, a musician friend sitting next to me whispered, “He conducts with the confidence of a man who thinks he’s the smartest person in the room. He doesn’t care what anyone else thinks.” I agree with that assessment entirely. I also agree with Maazel.
Outstanding in the Met’s cast was the Philip, Ferruccio Furlanetto. He is the Philip of this age, and, indeed, his Philip is arguably the greatest operatic portrayal around. I have heard him sing the king’s monologue many, many times, and I have never heard him better, or more moving, than on this particular night. Furlanetto might scoff at me, but I give the conducting some credit.
The next night, the Vienna Philharmonic started a three concert stand at Carnegie Hall. Conducting them was a fellow Austrian, Franz Welser-Möst, who is also the conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. The middle concert started with a Schubert symphony—No. 6—and ended with a Strauss tone poem—Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks. The orchestra played beautifully and executed neatly. This is the rare orchestra that is an instrument, a performer, unto itself. As for the conducting, it was adequate, sometimes better. Till can be funnier, darker and more exciting.
Between the Schubert and the Strauss came a work by Jörg Widmann, composed in 2003. Widmann is a German composer and clarinetist. This particular work is Lied, meaning “Song”w—and it is a kind of tribute to Schubert, or evocation of Schubert. It quotes several of that composer’s works.
The piece starts very, very quietly. In fact, Welser-Möst waited for a long time for a lady with a walker to reach her seat. He seemed quite annoyed, there on the podium. Lied is slow and arching, and takes its time to arch. It is essentially Romantic with modernist interventions and outbursts. Fittingly, Widmann gives the clarinetist a choice part. In my judgment, the piece is a little long for the material it has. It gets slightly tiresome.
But I’ll tell you what I admire about the piece: It is not an exercise in rhythm, percussion and freneticness, as so many of today’s pieces are. There are other elements of music. Widmann apparently knows this.
Stephen Hough knows it too. Once the Viennese cleared out, the English pianist gave a recital in Carnegie Hall, and among works by Chopin and other heavy-hitters, he presented a work of his own: his Piano Sonata No. 2, subtitled “Notturno Luminoso.” This is an unpredictable piece. It has a whiff of the cabaret lounge. Some perpetual motion. Some rhapsody. Some ripples, jabs and squiggles. Some Debussy. It feels improvisatory yet not unthought through. And I would like to hear it again, which may sound like faint praise, but is actually very high, for a new piece.
Moreover, we can appreciate a performer who rolls his own: who composes as well as plays. The performer and the composer were essentially one, till sometime in the early 20th century.
By the way, Hough used sheet music for his sonata, but not for the other composers’ pieces. He had a dispute with the page-turner, too: She turned too early once. I would rather pilot the space shuttle, blindfolded, than turn pages—some of the most nerve-wracking work there is.

Recently, when I’m not performing diligent research, sifting through a hard drive’s worth of mp3s, resting my chin in my hands contemplatively and having deep deep thoughts about pop songs for you lovely people, I’ve been playing a video game called  Bastion. It’s a really fun game, but more importantly, it’s a genuinely moving experience. If it was just the Isometric Action RPG it is in its core mechanics, that would be fine, but it’s Bastion’s presentation that makes it so unique and fantastic. That’s not to say that it’s style over substance; rather, it’s substance communicated perfectly by style. The most basic element of this is that Bastion is remarkably pretty, a techni-watercolor post-apocalypse that is simultaneously cartoony and grim. Added to this is the unreliable narration of Rucks (voiced beautifully by Logan Cunningham) who wryly comments on our actions as we hack and slash and shoot and explode our way through this ruined world, foreshadowing betrayals of trust and revealing dark secrets.

And all that would be enough to set Bastion apart from the pack: Wild-West tinged apocalyptic fantasy game, a Cormac McCarthy fairytale, wonderfully written and presented, full of depth and charm. But what elevates Bastion from a great game to an excellent one is its music, and the way it’s interwoven with the narrative.

Bastion‘s soundtrack was composed by Darren Korb, a New York-based musician with a background in scoring movies and television. Korb’s seamless blend of steel-bodied cowboy country, big beat electronica, western classical, and American and Middle-Eastern folk musics breathes uncanny life into the gameworld. The violent struggle for survival, the uneasy peace between rival countries Caelondia and Ura, the despair brought about by living off the scraps of your own dead civilization, and the hope of a brighter future (or a return to the comforting arms of the past); these things are present not only in the game’s visuals and narration but in the martial chaos of the industrial drum, oud and mouth harp-led “Terminal March” and the frontiers-y, old west-meets-breakbeats jam “In Case of Trouble.”

But while Korb’s compositions certainly flesh out Bastion, it’s the folk songs he wrote for the game that most inform the narrative. “Build That Wall” and “Mother, I’m Here” are sung by two of the game’s secondary characters (one of whom’s singing voice is Korb himself). They songs are relics of the world destroyed by the Calamity, the remnants of an all but extinct culture. They are eulogies and warnings, an attempt to hold on to the ephemeral and an acknowledgement of the inevitable. One of the most remarkable things about these songs isn’t fully evident until the end of the game, where they are combined into the soaring, sadly beautiful and beautifully sad “Setting Sail, Coming Home.” The songs are reflections of each other, parts of a larger whole. And, moreover, depending on the choices you make in the endgame, one’s interpretation of the lyrics is shifted. I don’t want to spoil too much, so I’ll just say that “Setting Sail, Coming Home” is as split between wanting to return to a bygone world and trying to build something out of its ashes as the rest of game is. I may or may not have teared up at the end of my first playthrough.

Bastion can be played on pretty much anything from an iPad to an XBox 360, and I strongly advise you to do so. Even if you are video game averse (and seeing as the medium is currently dominated by dumb, jingoistic bullshit like the Call of Duty games, I really can’t blame you) you should at least watch a few gameplay trailers, and listen to Darren Korb’s fantastic soundtrack. Hopefully it’ll change yer mind.

That’s this week in NTTOD. Follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @hunter_s_narc.

If “raucous” and “intimate” can coexist adroitly, that describes the atmosphere at the release party for Marc Spitz’s new memoir Poseur, an affair tucked cozily away up a staircase at the Lower East Side’s Slipper Room.

Everyone here knows each other, laughs heartily like old friends, embraces one another eagerly. An outsider would hardly recognize Spitz, who fades purposefully into the crowd, ceding the limelight, preferring a spot at a tiny table pressed up close to his old pals. Writer fame is different than other kinds, he’ll later explain, and release parties are stressful.

The Slipper Room is one of Spitz’s old haunts. He used to DJ here back in the day when DJing was nothing like how we think of it now. You’d have to seek out your records at a joint like the House of Oldies in the West Village, wait for your coveted 45s to zip up on a dumbwaiter.

Spitz would DJ many such bars, which rented out their booths to free agents like him.

“I’d stumble in drunk,” he says. “It was like a status thing.”

He adds: “Modern DJ culture happened over night.”

The burlesque dancers who take the stage at the Slipper Room are a handful of originals from Spitz’s days of haunting the venue, moving salaciously to such 90s acts as Nine Inch Nails while suggestively gripping copies of Poseur.

Brought back to perform just for Spitz, they show no hint of being out of touch.

The man behind the sunglasses

Forty-three-year-old Spitz, born in Far Rockaway, has written plays, novels, and nonfiction, and has a prolific career as a music journalist for “Spin.”

Perhaps this is why, when I ask to meet somewhere “of significance,” he chooses the White Horse Tavern in the West Village, a famed joint known for drawing such patrons as Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, and Hunter S. Thompson over the years.

Spitz, who shows up with a Sylvia Plath button on his authentic Burberry trench coat and two Basset Hounds—named for Joni Mitchell and Jerry Orbach—in tow, is just a slightly aged version of the grungy, gangly, and perhaps slightly awkward kid in sunglasses and Edie Sedgwick t-shirt who graces the cover of Poseur. He still wears a black leather bracelet and sunglasses, and seems perpetually caught off-guard.

“I’ve been there, but I don’t really like it,” says Spitz of the White Horse. “It’s why I came to the City,” he adds, referring to the larger, rich history of writer culture rather than the establishment itself.

In Poseur, Spitz recounts studying at Bennington College in Vermont but knowing if he wanted to make it as a writer, he must get to New York City, and fast. Specifically, he must live at the Chelsea Hotel in a sort of “bohemian squalor” in order to launch himself into the kind of pictures of success with which the ambitious collegian figuratively surrounds himself.

Eventually Spitz’s young ambitions will amount to more than just pipe dreams. His story is truly one of wanting something badly enough and succeeding, though at some point, he realizes merely getting his body to the city where great artists flourish (and often founder miserably) isn’t enough.

“There’s definitely a ‘what now?’ moment,” he says.

In Poseur, Spitz writes of spending his first night in the renowned Chelsea Hotel, scared to death, barely expecting to survive, unsure who or what might break down the door in the middle of the night. It’s not exactly the romantic experience he envisioned when he thought of Patti Smith walking into the lobby and feeling as though she’d “come home.”

“The Chelsea was the home I wanted, but it was also a place where people suffered and sometimes died,” he writes in his memoir.

As a music writer, Spitz interviewed many of rock’s big names, but even then had trouble getting past the sense he was nothing more than a fraud. He would have to invent a persona to overcome his shyness.

“Bowie was shy,” he explains. “It’s genetic, people are predisposed, but I overcame it by inventing someone who wasn’t shy.”
“I couldn’t even talk to a rock star. Interviews felt like blind dates. I’d have to drink, put on sunglasses, I couldn’t be honest. I’d have to take a pill.”

Still, Spitz “felt like part of rock and roll even though [he] wasn’t in a band because [he] was part of a larger phenomenon—part of the ecosystem of the rock world.”

Perhaps not too much has changed, as he relays his own anxiety over being interviewed to this day. “I can write about it, but in person it’s like maybe I should leave it in the shrink’s office,” he says.

Shy kids write diaries, explains Spitz. He kept a diary his whole life, allowing him to recall with ease, as he does, what songs were playing on the radio at any given moment.

(Spitz’s choice to include in his memoir so many references to artists he says is a nod to technology—the ability for the reader to quickly Google anything unfamiliar—as well as a stylistic choice.)

Poseur

Spitz says Poseur is the first book of his last four that didn’t feel “like a job” to write because he called all the shots, giving it—for him—an unprecedented level of honesty and integrity.

“There’s no way to bullshit it. Maybe I just wanted to be an authority on something,” he says.

Still, writing a memoir was a new experience with its own challenges. “It’s hard to have things come to light after the fact. I still have dreams that I’m working on it,” he adds. “It’s sad.”

Spitz wrote Poseur before selling it. He says it occupies a place in his heart which hasn’t been fulfilled since he wrote at length about The Smiths.

“My other books are sold in airports,” he says. That’s not to say he’s not waiting for Poseur to become a sensation.

Poseur is the story of how Spitz searches for the authenticity that makes great writers and artists, but it’s also a candid examination—peeling back the skin of downtown New York City in the 90s.

In penning the memoir, ruminating on downtown now versus then, Spitz describes a mix of emotions.

From ‘93 to ‘94, he briefly moved to Hollywood. Even then, he says, New York City was changing.

“I moved back for good in ‘95; you could tell it was a different city.”

“It changed so much,” he says. “If I left the Lower East Side in ‘95 and came back, I would not recognize anything…I would wonder ‘is it still dangerous?’”

“It took 15 years to become that way,” he adds. “It took 30 years to get beyond the 70s myth. I thought it was time to write this book because of how quickly things were changing.”

“It offers a record of bygone time that is literally bygone.”

Spitz describes writing Poseur as an instinctual and freeing process. As a writer who no longer tries to write like others, he notes Poseur offers a good lens to view the changes in himself as well as the City.

Despite this, Spitz says a lot of what went into the book arose from input and discussions with others. He was also not afraid to pull back the curtains on his process and personal evolution.

“Does older, wiser me comment in the book?” Spitz asks. “Yes, but I think that makes for a more pleasant, sadder, sweeter read.”

He also worried at times about missing out on the humanity that can arise in fiction if he was too busy trying to get the period right.

Taking in the city with Spitz

As we walk through the Village, Spitz pauses briefly, perhaps nostalgically, below the “Peace to the World” sign at the Saint Anthony of Padua Church. He recalls the church as a sort of East to West gateway from his younger, wilder years.

We wind up at The Library bar on the Lower East Side, where Spitz worries he won’t know who’s working anymore. To his delight, Kendra is behind the bar, as she has been for the past 10 years. She tells Spitz her psychedelic solo act is taking off and slides us a couple business cards.

“I used to drink here all the time,” says Spitz from behind his sunglasses, sipping a tall Bloody Mary. The coolly distant boy from the cover of Poseur momentarily reemerges. “I can’t count how many hours I’ve spent here.”

At some point, Spitz realized he was ready for a slower pace of life. “New York is for young people,” he says. “I want to age gracefully. You feel like a ghost, haunting the neighborhood.”

“I loved anyone who wanted to die young…I could only die too young.” It’s too late for that now, he adds.

Before taking off into the brisk Lower East Side afternoon, Spitz sheds a little more light on the artistic process with an observation that would resonate with anyone who’s just completed their magnum opus: “The world didn’t end when the book came out.”

“Just make me sound cool,” he says, finally, making sure I know he’s quoting Almost Famous.

Since the release of 2008′s astoundingly mediocre Modern Guilt, Beck has all but stepped away from conventional rockstardom. He’s spent the past few years on idiosyncratic projects like the Record Club,  a collaboration with such luminaries as Annie Clark, Angus Andrews, Devendra Banhart, Thurston Moore, Jeff Tweedy, and, uh, Giovanni Ribisi. Beck assembled these Superfriends of Indie at his Los Angeles studios to cover classic albums like The Velvet Underground & Nico, Songs of Leonard Cohen, and Yanni Live at the Acropolis, because why not. The results were ramshackle and frequently annoying, but you get the impression that the Record Club re-imaginings were always meant to be things that were more fun to make than to listen to. Beck was also remixing everyone from Lykke Li to Philip Glass, as well as writing songs for Charlotte Gainsbourg, comic book movies, various vampire-based media, and video games, amongst other things. Last year, he released an album, but only  in one nigh-obsolescent format: sheet music.

So it seemed that while Beck was interested in staying busy and producing music, he was done with the spotlight. No more crazy touring and break-dancing and puppet shows; it was now time to jam with your friends, contribute to soundtracks, and let the new kids get a chance to shine. But last week, Beck stepped back out of the shadows. Well, sort of.

To launch Lincoln’s “Hello-Again” campaign (a vain attempt to get twentysomethings interested in buying Towncars, now that their customer base has all but died off), they commissioned a cover of David Bowie’s classic “Sound & Vision” from the ’90s Indie darling. But, as the above video proves, this was no mere cover. Beck enlisted the help of 160+ musicians, including a gospel choir, a drum line, a gamelan orchestra, horn and string section, neo-soul group the Dap Kings, a harpist, guitarists playing everything from fancy electro-acoustics to flying vs, a bunch of mandolinists, a dude playing a singing saw, another dude playing a theremin (aka the sci-fi singing saw), and a frigging yodeler, all conducted by noted composer, Scientologist, and Ron Paul supporter David Campbell, who, by the by, is also Becks father. All of this is staged 360º around a slowly rotating audience (watch the video; it’ll make sense) with Mr. Beck Hansen strumming and singing his heart out in the dead center.

The whole thing is an experiment in maximalism that goes beyond the absurdly large backing band; Beck & Co. stretch Bowie’s pared-down proto-new wave song (which, by my count, lyrically consists of less of fifty words) into a nine minute plus, multi-movement opus. Yet it’s not decadent or tacky (okay, maybe a little, but in a good way); the elaborate, intertwining arrangements and Beck’s radical reinterpretation of the original turn it into something bold, new, and truly moving. It never feels excessive, and each instrument and voice is in service of the song. While it wouldn’t work without those 160+ musicians, it’s all really about our man Beck at center stage, not just singing but performing, basking in the spotlight for the first time in a good long while.

That’s Now Take Them Out, Devils for ya. If you want to see what Simon Lazarus Vasta finds funny at three in the morning, you can follow him on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc

Last Saturday, while the Internet was busy minding its own business, the My Bloody Valentine Facebook page issued this short missive:

“We are preparing to go live with the new album/website this evening. We will make an announcement as soon as its up.”

Then, at 23:58 Greenwich Mean Time, www.mybloodyvalentine.org burst into existence, accompanied by m b v, the band’s third full length and their first album in 22 long, long years.

The site crashed within minutes.

If you’ve seen anyone wandering the street aimlessly, cloudy eyed and with a dirge leaking out of their headphones, that’s yet another popkid who’s still recovering from the shock of finding themselves living in a world where there’s a third My Bloody Valentine record. If you can imagine what a Pentecost experiencing the Rapture* would feel like, you’ll have a good idea of what these boys and girls are going through. The thing they’ve waited for, for what seems like their entire lives, is finally here, but they’re still not really prepared for it. All they can do is put it on ‘replay all’ and let it wash over them.

The first thing that popkid is gonna think once she recovers from that initial shock is, “Wow, nobody makes a My Bloody Valentine album like Kevin Shields.” And you know what? She’s right. Bands from the Scene That Celebrates Itself such as  Slowdive and Ride (not to mention more recent Shoegaze revivalists like Asobi Seksu, Serena-Maneeesh, and Blonde Redhead, just to name a few**) all attempted their take on the My Bloody Valentine sound, to varying degrees of success, but none of them could ever properly replicate the wall of sound that Kevin Shields and company had devised for their seminal second record, 1991′s Loveless. What made that record so unique is how it managed to be delicate and nuanced, while, at the same time, it felt monolithic and impregnable. It was as if it was both liquid and solid at once; from that angle, it’s a duck, but from this one, it’s a rabbit.

While m b v definitely shares it’s sonic DNA with Loveless, to call it a follow-up or a sequel of some sort would be missing the point. Shields himself has said that the album has more in common with MBV’s first LP, Isn’t Anything, and I can see what he’s saying. Loveless is from the other side of the looking glass, while this album is more firmly planted in the real world, even if it is making frequent glances at the mirror. There’s even a little bit of the You Made Me Realize EP’s more standard approach floating around in here, too. But m v b is more than a bunch of throwbacks to the band’s late eighties/early nineties heyday; there’s something new going on, something less polished, something more playful.

Unlike most Shoegaze, this album isn’t afraid to sound like it’s having a bit of fun. This may come as a bit of a surprise to those who have heard the stories of Kevin Shields’ hermetically obsessive studio tweaking, the sleepless night and marathon recording sessions, but m b v sounds like it was fun to make. This is especially clear on my favorite track, “New You,” a lighthearted tune that one might even feel tempted to categorize as ‘funky’. Not that it’s all sunshine and roses: “Only Tomorrow” brings the classic MBV drone to it’s logical conclusion, while instrumental “Nothing Is” is one brutal chord over and over again. I hated it at first. Now I kinda dig it.

It’s not a perfect record, certainly. m b v is very poorly sequenced, and the second half of the album lacks any cohesive flow***. The whole thing just kinda sputters to a halt after the cool but also kinda uninteresting ‘Wonder 2,’ a drum-n-bass inspired attempt to out-dance-music Loveless closer “Soon.” But overall, m b v is a triumphant return from a too-long hiatus.

And that’s NTTOD for this week. You can follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc, or if yer interested in seeing him post photoclusters as re re-watches Twin Peaks, check out his Tumblr.

*Not the band, silly.

**And then even more recently a newer, arguably more interesting batch of Shoegaze revivalists such as The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, DIIV, and The Horrors… holy crap, does three revivals a proper genre make?

*** In fact, I’m beginning to feel like ‘collection’ is a better word for what’s going on here than ‘album.’