Sexy Beast (Lame)

Sometimes it's really easy to tell someone what is quote-unquote important about the music I like. Whether it's a justification game (the one I played with myself for about 6 months before giving over and putting "Toxic" on every mixtape I made) or actual historical contingency (which winds up sounding like a biblical geneaology; and the Sex Pistols begat Joy Division, who begat New Order, Fad Gadget, and the Cure, who begat Echo, son of Bunnymen, etc.), there is this thing that obsessive collectors do where we try to place records in context and then examine how they differ or create the context in which we find them. Whether or not they actually had anything to do with the narrative into which we put them is sort of irrelevant, it's a tool for ordering the world. This, of course, becomes more imminently necessary as one's iTunes begins to bulge and buckle at around 10,000 songs. The only way you're going to remember any more than maybe 150 records offhand is by placing them in narrative context: this begat so and so, maybe I'd like to listen to that today.

Which is why records like Nathan Michel's The Beast tend to sit for long periods of time unused until I stumble around and find them, blindly, without intention. Because, how, really, do you put a record like this in context? I was trying for a while, but as far as I got was Steely Dan.

Nathan Michel is like a cubist painting of Steely Dan. And it's pretty; arms sprouting from heads and shoes with disembodied legs in them aside, this is a pop record made by a food processor. So there's not much separation of flavor. You get it all or you get it none.

This is a friendly record on which things happen. The melodies in and of themselves wouldn't be a challenge to anyone who has heard any crisply produced pop record - hence the Steely Dan (the jazz inflections that occasionally flavor the puree also reek of the Dan) but Jim O'Rourke isn't inappropriate, either - but The Beast uses the same vocabulary with different syntax.

I'm gonna have to show you, aren't I?

Nathan Michel - A to B

Rikki don't lose that intro. See what I'm saying? This is possibly the most unfucked song on this record - scratch that, this is positutely the most unfucked song on this record. But it's a lot of fun, nonetheless. I mean, wah. Who, other than Sr. Chinarro, can get away with using wah? (We'll get to Sr. later, when I'm ready.) The point is, this a tremendously interesting little tune. But I'm gonna have to show you something else to convince you to buy this record, I fear.

Nathan Michel - Planet

Goddamn, man. It's just a Stereolab tune, but with somebody falling asleep atop the pitchshifter. And that's awesome. And, actually, it's only really a Stereolab track in construction - which could be equally well applied to any number of krautrock bands or anybody else who eschews linear songwriting for lots of things at once. But this track is probably the best example of why The Beast is such a fucking record.

Plus, to make things better, the record's on out-ass pseudo-electronic label Sonig, which states its mission as creating "...a space in which new terms for music can be located." Looks like somebody got their master's degree and a record label.

But fuck-serously, get this record, which is one of the better to come out this year. I like to think I'm so past ranking, but I'm not, so there you have it, if you need quantitative and comparable schemata in order to get you to buy records.

So, yeah, buy it here, unless you buy it thru Sonig or somewhere else, which is just as good.

Soon enough, we'll be talking about feminism. Stick around for that if you'd like to call me a pig.