Archives for November 2016

35-for-35: 2008 – “Dying Is Fine” by Ra Ra Riot

November 25, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Sometimes songs can see the future.

Yes, I know that the interpretation of art is in the eye of the beholder, and just as we look to coincidences in the world as the sign of supernatural guidance we can also believe in the kismet of a song that perfectly describes a situation in our lives. A good song should do and be that.

Yet, I think some songs – the best songs – are something more, because they so perfectly describe a future they have not yet glimpsed.

I have a song called “A Few Bars of Goodbye” that has maintained its favorite over the past fifteen years, with E, Gina, and now EV counting themselves as fans. I wrote the song as a project for a songwriting class at Drexel. It wasn’t based in life at all, but on trying to tell a complete narrative through imagery. It’s the story of a young couple – a career girl and a cool rock boy, who is blithe to the fact that she’s isn’t getting anything she needs from their relationship.

This is the third verse:

Yes it’s hard! You know it’s hard for her to do it
And she wishes she didn’t have a 9-to-5 grind
But while she’s out there in the real world
She wonders where he’s been spending his time
Wrapped up in his chords? Trying to write the next killer line?

Now she’s humming a few bars of goodbye

I’ve never identified with the song before this year, because E and I have always had a (more than) 9-to-5 grind plus our own passion projects. Being at home with EV focused solely on the twin passion projects of this blog and my music makes those lyrics uncomfortably close to home. Now I am the one spending the day wrapped up in my chords and trying to write the next killer line, and I expend so much time, effort, and communication trying to ensure E and I don’t share the same fate as the couple in this song.

“Dying Is Fine” was one of the earliest songs written by Ra Ra Riot, and it’s among their best. An insectile frenzy of strings dissipates to reveal a disco backbeat and a simple four-note guitar line, backed by a swirling liquid bed of violin and cello.

I love that juxtaposition of elements, along with Wes Miles’s slightly stuffy-nosed baritone vocals. Every aspect of the song fights against the others, creating a push-pulling against your ears until a bridge unifies all the instruments into a building crescendo. Afterwards, the chorus comes off completely different – a summation rather than a frantic cry. The song is a magic trick of exuding both joy and grief at the same time.

Ra Ra Riot formed in 2006 at parties at their alma mater Syracuse University and quickly exploded into indie-rock notability thanks to positive reactions from tastemakers and festival cords. They recorded “Dying Is Fine” with their original drummer, John Ryan Pike, for their debut EP, released in July 2007.

John Ryan Pike drowned after a show in June of 2007.

ra-ra-riot-the-rhumb-line Can you imagine – not only continuing as a band after one of your best friends and bandmates had died, but still playing his songs, and having your breakthrough come from a song you wrote with him that had this chorus?

Death, oh baby
You know that dying is fine but maybe
I wouldn’t like death if death were good
Not even if death were good

You might think that the unique push-pull of the song came from its increased resonance after Pike’s death, but you can hear all the same elements on the version he recorded with the band. It still had the grief and the joy. That disco backbeat is Pike’s, present on that original recording. The liquid waves of strings were always there. The bridge that braids the elements together into resolution is intact.

Is this it
Maundering about and
All I have is too much time to understand

That one can only love
Life until its ending
Oh, and I can’t forget

“Dying Is Fine” was complete already, a perfect picture of the grief it would be release into on that EP, and then the band’s full-length followup, The Rhumb Line. Part of those lyrics are cribbed (with acknowledgment) from an e e cummings poem of the same name: [Read more…] about 35-for-35: 2008 – “Dying Is Fine” by Ra Ra Riot

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Warblade: Endangered Species #1-4, Grifter: One Shot (1995), and Maul in “Thinking Big”

November 24, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Today I’ll tackle the three WildCAT spinoffs published to date – Warblade’s mini-series, a Grifter One-Shot, and a Maul solo story in Image Rarities.

warblade-endangered-species-0001 While Grifter eventually getting his own title was fait accompli, at this point it feels like Warblade is the least deserving of all the WildCATs who merited their own sideline series. At least Maul has the dichotomy of being a modern art loving nerd by day and a massive purple hulk on the battlefield. Maybe that’s why Warblade needed his own series so badly – because his narrative arc had been treading water ever since Killer Instinct.

Hearing Warblade’s internal monologue across four issues helps to solidify his character. He isn’t ruled by rage at all times as we’ve seen in the heat of so many battles. He can be cool and analytical, but he’s also not the best tactician, which leads him into unfortunate situations when his rage takes over and he prepares to strike.

Steven Seagle delivers solid workmanship and well-structured issues, which is exactly what WildStorm needs in growing out its cast of characters. Scott Clark’s name is welcome sight on pencils, having disappeared for several months after his stellar work launching Stormwatch. His output isn’t quite up to that par, with his figures getting increasingly gawky starting in issue #3.

By contrast, Grifter has been the breakout star of WildCATs from their first issue, which makes his flaccid one-shot a puzzler. Steven Seagle spends as much time having Grifter think about women as objects as he does having him show any kind of charm or expertise. The story adds a useless layer of backstory in addition to Zealot’s training and Team 7. It feels like the worst sort of Marvel book, that adds in layers of complicated history just because it can and then is quickly ignored (usually because, like this one, it kills all of its interesting new characters).

Finally, we come to Maul, the art-loving romantic who is also the WildCATs’ biggest bruiser. He was highlighted in an original story by Mark Waid called “Thinking Big” in Wildstorm Rarities. It’s a quick tossaway tale about Maul catching a runaway jet in his hands, but it makes clear that even in his smaller iterations as Maul the intelligence he has as Jeremy is inaccessible. It’s these little human moments that WildCATs had been missing – but, it also didn’t have a master like Mark Waid writing it.

Want the full details? Keep reading for a deeper breakdown of the plot. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. Tomorrow, finally, it’s back to Stormwatch with#17-21 & Special 02! Plus, while I’ve got a copy of WildStorm Rarities handy, I’ll cover the other stories from that issue – which occurred quite some time ago in continuity.

Need the issues? None of these issues have been collected, so you’ll need to hunt them down as singles (though Grifter and Rarities are actually both perfect-bound books): Warblade: Endangered Species (Amazon / eBay), Grifter: One Shot (Amazon / eBay), and WildStorm Rarities (Amazon / eBay), which is a perfect-bound book with a spine.

Live @ Rehearsal Thanksgiving Spectacular – November 24th, 2016

November 24, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Coming to you just a few minutes past live on Thanksgiving!

Setlist: Something Real, Tangling, Real You, Unengaged, Saving Grace, Shake It Off, Naturally

Performance Notes:

I can feel so incredibly self-conscious when I’m playing slow songs. Maybe that’s why I tend to speed up so many tempos early in the life of my songs. Case and point – “Something Real” and “Tangling,” which felt impossibly sparse as I was playing them and on re-listen sound just find. “Tangling,” especially, almost never retains its tempo throughout, and most old CK recordings at it are nearly twice as fast as this one.

“Real You” is a unique one in almost every respect – the acoustic hard-rocking, the singing style, the half-open discordant barres. It’s one of my loudest songs straight-through, with the exception of the first line in the bridge. I’ve never seen myself play it before, nor have I played it through compression before. What a difference! I have some work to do to strengthen my chest to falsetto transition on the choruses.

You’re going to keep seeing more of “Saving Grace” and “Shake It Off,” the latter because I am going to keep playing it until I get it right, the former because it’s nearly in the same tuning and also one of EV’s favorites. I’m getting closer to remembering how to play “Saving Grace” in that original tuning.

I write crazy bridges. This is fact. I manage to cobble together something resembling the right thing in “Unengaged” by focusing on getting the roots right, but I’m totally lost for two whole minutes in “Naturally” before I find the roots again (although if you hang in there I kind of sort of get there eventually and manage to finish the song).

It’s a shame, since otherwise it was a solid first recording of an impossibly hard-to-play song I’ve been rehearsing for six years now. I suspect you’ll be seeing more of it in the near future.

But, seriously, how amazing is my hair in this video?

35-for-35: 2007 – Under the Blacklight by Rilo Kiley

November 24, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Screw double jeopardy, it’s been almost ten years and I need to talk about this one again.

rilo-kiley-under-the-blacklight My obsession with Barsuk Records dates back to the early days of CK – I first posted about the label in January of 2001, but I had already been spinning Death Cab For Cutie’s Forbidden Love EP for weeks after being turned onto it by the owner of the old Spaceboy Records, who used to visit the coffee shop where I worked.

Barsuk was on top of the early internet game with a cool website and lots of MP3 samples, and over the course of the next year I came to know and love the label’s early roster of oddball rockers – Abigail Grush, This Busy Monster, Little Champions, and The Long Winters (though I was never a John Vanderslice fan).

One band, in particular, really captured my imagination. They were called Rilo Kiley, and featured a casual, squeaky-voiced women singing earnest, emo-ish, indie-rock tunes over glisteningly clean guitar tones.

I devoured song samples like “Bulletproof,” and when I bought their Sophomore effort The Execution of All Things on release day it completely took over my listening for a month. I remember laying in bed in E’s big shared house on Poweltown Avenue, listening to it on repeat on my CD Walkman while she slept.

I would have never imagined that an LP like 2007’s Under The Blacklight would emerge from that scrappy, squeaky, indie band, even after their sonically meandering More Adventurous in 2004. Where the first two Rilo Kiley LPs were filled with rough edges, Blacklight is wall-to-wall sheen. Where Jenny Lewis used to sound like an earnest alt-country crooner, now she is a rock powerhouse.

(Seriously: I saw them tour on this record, and I’ve never before seen a rock frontwoman in such good voice as Lewis, short of PJ Harvey.)

(It’s a complete coincidence that both Harvey and RK received full LP write-ups in a month of song-of-the-day.)

(Or maybe it isn’t.)

Opener “Silver Lining” begins the album with a complete reset of expectations. Handclaps, piano, and a gospel-tinged backup singers aren’t exactly the earmarks of Rilo Kiley’s prior sound, and there’s no doubt that Jenny Lewis’s 2006 acoustic soul effort Rabbit Fur Coat had an influence on the sound of the band’s return. Lewis’s voice streams and catches like honey, totally unlike any prior effort save for maybe the prior LP’s “I Never.”

And I was your silver lining, as the story goes.
I was your silver lining, but now I’m gold.

Hooray, hooray! I’m your silver lining.
Hooray, hooray! But now I’m gold.

The girl of “Silver Lining” is a trickle of quicksilver, something great in your life that you barely recognized before you lost your grip. It’s also about being defined by your partner and what you add to them, rather than who are are as an individual. Life isn’t like the movies – there aren’t any sidekicks or romantic interests, because everyone is a protagonist in their own minds. You might still be thinking of your silver lining as the one that got away, but she’s living her golden life in that getaway car.

That fleeting happiness is a theme of this bruised LP. Despite a lot of depression mixed in with its themes, Under The Blacklight doesn’t bear a single regret. It never hesitates to smile on the good times that came before the bruises started to show.

The other predominant theme of the album is sex. Blacklight sounds like the diary of a sex addict, filled with carnal obsessions and morning after regrets. It’s bracing to hear the disarmingly sweet Lewis lend her voice to these narratives, like seeing a favorite child actress tackle her first adult role. Or, as with Juliana Hatfield (a clear predecessor), would I even notice those innuendos from a male-led band?

It speaks to Lewis’s deft narrative touch that both of the following songs are about the monetary value of sex, yet this album never seems to be talking down at sex workers. Lewis’s lyrics obsess over sex, but she and her characters are never defined by it. [Read more…] about 35-for-35: 2007 – Under the Blacklight by Rilo Kiley

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Wetworks #4-7

November 23, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]The opening arc of Wetworks masqueraded as a modern Team 7 with a supernatural bent, but this run of issues locks in the vampire underworld drama as the central plot of the book.

wetworks_v1_04 It feels like the team takes a backseat in these issues, although they do finally get some character development off the battle field. While I’ve finally got all of their names straight (Dane, Grail, Claymore, Jester, Pilgrim, and Dozer back at base), it’s hard to care about any of them aside from the team’s advance scout, Pilgrim. Coincidentally (or not?), Pilgrim gets two of the biggest scenes in the run that generate more questions than answers.

There’s also a lot of focus on the mystery of Mother One – who, let’s not forget, murdered two of the team in #3 just to gather telemetry. That was meant to be a surprise, but here she’s dropped all pretenses of being anything other eeky cyborg lady who freely reads everyone’s minds and is only 20% human to begin with. The team quickly grows as suspicious of her as we are as readers.

If it was hard to trust Mother One as a reader, it’s impossible to root for either side of the vampire conflict. Drakken is definitely written as more “evil,” but we’re talking about vampires here – they’re all evil. By contrast, his cousin the queen seems bored by her entire existence, barely deigning to make a semi-century appearance in front of her subjects and bristling at her inability to join in the fray of battle. Would it be so bad to depose her?

We learn that Wetworks is less an interloper and more a third wheel in the internecine vampire wars, thanks to their creepy benefactor Waering being a werewolf himself. Or, at least, the letters columns told me that – I had to go back to #5 and squint pretty hard to figure he was the human identity of the werewolf we meet.

Whilce Portacio isn’t delivering the same A-Game we saw in the first few issues. As with all of the Image founders within their first years, not being reigned in by editorial brings out both his best and his worst tendencies. The other founders had moved past that phase at this point (and, in Jim Lee’s case, off of his book) while Portacio is still figuring things out.

His panels are overly busy and too dark. It results in a lot of muddled, making characters hard to recognize (on top of them all being identical and gold). Plus, some key actions are indecipherable, as with a pivotal scene with Claymore and Jester that I can’t make heads or tails of. He seems to really cut loose when the WildCATs are briefly on panel (or maybe that’s Joe Chiodo enjoying their brighter palette) in a way that we don’t see again in this run. Francis Takenaga scripts Portacio’s plot with way too many words and far too little clarity; these issues are his first comic credits.

This run gives us a lot of information about the timing of other titles. Lynch is out at IO and Santini is reporting directly to Craven in #4, which places this after Gen13. Then, WildCATs appear in #4-5 sometime around WildCATs #14 (it’s prior to Voodoo’s injury in WildCATs #15) except they’re missing Warblade – so maybe that is after #19? Anyhow, it gives Grifter and Dane their first meeting. That throws a bit of a wrench into Deathblow #9-12 (where Lynch is with IO and Grifter and Dane work together), except maybe none of that actually happened, so we’re not going to get too worried about it.

Want the full details? Keep reading for a deeper breakdown of the plot. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. tomorrow we’ll work on three WildCATs tie-ins: Warblade: Endangered Species (1995) #1-4, Grifter: One Shot (1995), and a WildStorm Rarities Maul story. Then, it’s back to Stormwatch (1993) #17-21 & Special 02!!!

Need the issues? You’ll need to purchase single issues – try eBay (#4-7) or Amazon (#4, 5, 6, 7). Since further Wetworks series hit these same issue numbers, be careful to pick up issues from the 1994 series – an easy way to tell the difference is that Mike Carey is the writer on the later relaunch. [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Wetworks #4-7