Bangs & Works Vol 1, Radiohead, Car Seat Headrest
Pitchfork #129 - 127
#129 Various Artists, Bangs & Works Vol. 1 (2010)
Rating: 1
This one is going to have the plumber convention problem again. Writing about this record is sort of like reviewing the assembly instruction booklet for an Ikea bookshelf. No one enjoys it, it’s not meant to be enjoyed on its own. I would venture to say that even the producer of this record would agree with me. You’re not supposed to listen to this record, and I recommend you don’t. It’s neither good nor bad.
Lemme explain. This is a collection of tracks that are intended as fuel for Chicago footwork dancing. It’s a thing. On the one hand, it grooves, it feels like a club. On the other hand, it's meant for a specific kind of frantic (160 bpm), often competitive dancing. Try a minute of "Jungle Juke.” If you’re not footwork dancing, it’s intolerable. VERY tight sampling loops, like the same half-second 50 times. So that must be part of the deal. Try "Fuck Dat" for a few seconds. It sort of sounds like you've got a Yamaha keyboard with different samples programmed on every key, then you just hit them as fast as you can. “Total Darkness” should have a seizure warning, same with “One Blood.” Listening to this in headphones like a coherent album is psycho. Trust me.
Here’s an example of a Chicago footwork battle. Notice a couple things. The social and communal event is the thing. The music is a supplement. Also notice how no one else except the person on the spot is dancing, grooving, clapping, whatever — that’s because you can’t do anything except footwork to this music. It’s otherwise undanceable, so you just watch. That’s not criticism, I think that’s part of the deal, on purpose.
Less than a month ago, the New York Times published a piece about footwork, specifically about how the Chicago-born style is finally getting some recognition, in the form of the night-projected art show on the Merchandise Mart
It was these dancers-turned-D.J.s who created the footwork sound, increasing the tempo and stripping things down to ratchet up the tension (or throw off rival dancers) in dance battles — intense, improvisational face-offs that became the core of footwork culture in the early 2000s. Overlapping rhythms gave dancers more options, and competition pushed innovation. — NYT, 6/30/2021
Pitchfork writers:
In dance music circles, it’s hard to think of a more important recent document than Bangs and Works. While Chicago footwork had been percolating for over 20 years at the time of the compilation’s release, for many people outside the local scene, it proved to be their first experience of the genre’s marriage of breakneck beats with haunting soul samples
#128 Radiohead, A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)
Rating: 4
Ok, two things. First, one of my favorite records, period. Very heavy rotation a few years ago to soothe the pain that was 2016. Second, I am so intimidated to write anything about Radiohead. I haven’t completed my Masters in Radiohead Analysis. So I’m going to write from the perspective of #1 and leave #2 to the Thom Yorke imams.
Radiohead, at least after OK Computer, is nearly impossible for me to describe or place via my glib comparisons and mashups. Always experimental and yet melodic and rhythmic. But what's remarkable to me is how they take what sort of sound like simple hooks, loops, samples, chords, and weirded-out noises and turn them into a transcendent enveloping soundscape. I learned from looking at guitar tabs that the chords are unusually complex with all those diminished 6th doodads and whatnot, but the melody line might just be four notes repeated over and over. Says a lot about Godrich, Greenwood, and of course Yorke that their exquisite production and sound-shaping really makes all the difference. Like not just the specific note, but the tone and the balance and the compression. The band’s exquisite genius is delivering newness with balance. But somehow they’re not just a studio project, their live performances are also transporting.
Personally I just find it transcendent, I can't pull it apart and say here's the keyboard, here's the drum, etc. A beautiful record that I can only insult trying to analyze. Re-listening to Burn the Witch for the thousandth time, I only now noticed the weird and cool vocoder-buzz countermelody in the background in the first 30 seconds…and as I focused on it, I immediately I felt the magic dissipating. It doesn’t work that way.
The same thing works with their performances in general. Take a look at this gorgeous Paul Thomas Anderson video for “Daydreaming”. Imagine the difference between describing it to someone on paper, versus the actual mesmerizing cumulative effect of the video with the music.
And don’t get me started on the 13 minutes of gorgeous cinematic abstract madness that is Anima on Netflix. I tear up just thinking about watching the last 7 minutes of that. Especially since I learned that last September he MARRIED! the beautiful dancing Italian actress in the video
OK, I digress.
The band worked on this record for almost two years. It was an emotional time. Thom Yorke split from his wife Rachel Owen, who died of cancer shortly after the recording. Nigel Godrich recorded the strings for “Burn the Witch” on the day his father died. “I literally left him on a table at my house and went and recorded.” They were still reeling from a 2012 stage collapse in Toronto that killed a drum technician.
The album was also recorded on analog tape! Which throws the warbling beginning of “Daydreaming” into a new light.
"Ful Stop" is a mental mantra. "Glass Eyes" is like being underwater in a crystal pool. "True Love Waits," a longtime fan favorite in live performances for years prior, is so gentle and simple and gorgeous that it compels you to repeat the whole record. “Desert Island Disk” could have been a beautiful acoustic guitar filler, but instead there’s a floating choral-strings-bells thing that shoots it into the stars. “Decks Dark” is a late night drive. "Present Tense" finishes in a choral dream. Everything just fits together so well.
Before I go, two fun facts. The weird sort-of-snoring voice at the end of “Daydreaming” is a backwards sample of Yorke singing “half of my life,” which is the amount of time the 47-year old had been together with Rachel (augh, my god) Second, the tracks on this record are in alphabetical order by title!
Pitchfork writers:
When A Moon Shaped Pool entered the world in May 2016, many of the horrors Radiohead had spent more than two decades warning us about were coming to fruition. Campaigns for Brexit and Trump were spreading odious strains of nationalism. The Earth’s temperature was reaching precipitous new highs. Nefarious companies were harvesting data from tens of millions of Facebook users in order to undermine American democracy. And yet the record does not wallow. The stubbornly forward-facing quintet allows itself to look back while avoiding self-parody or indulgence. It’s a nod to the symbiotic bond Radiohead keeps with their listeners through the worst of times, a bond that this album elegantly upholds.
#127 Car Seat Headrest, Teens of Denial (2016)
Rating: 4
One of my favorite discoveries from this decade. Is it coincidence that it was also released the same month as Moon Shaped Pool at #128? It's effortless, mildly punky rock. I want to say it's The Strokes bred with The Hold Steady. The lead singer is perpetually annoyed to be singing right now, but is radiantly present.
The storytelling is amazing, compelling. You might be able to tell I'm not the biggest lyrics guy but this is a record where I find myself automatically tuning into what he's actually saying. It's both poetic and accessible. I mean, one song is "Destroyed By Hippie Powers" - aren't you already intrigued?
What happened to that chubby little kid who smiled so much and loved The Beach Boys? / What happened is I killed that fucker and I took his name and I got new glasses
"(Joe Gets Kicked Out of School for Using) Drugs With Friends (But Says This Isn’t a Problem)" is a short, vulnerable, almost folksong story about taking acid set to acoustic guitar, escalating to a refrain that has always stuck with me: "Drugs are better, drugs are better with friends, are better, friends are better with drugs".
It's too late to articulate it / That empty feeling you share the same fate as the people you hate
You build yourself up against others' feelings / and it left you feeling empty as a car coasting downhill
I have become such a negative person / It was all just an act / It was all so easily stripped away
But if we learn how to live like this / Maybe we can learn how to start again
Like a child who's never done wrong / Who hasn't taken that first step
It's not serious but just serious enough. "Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales" -- see? I'm caught in between wanting to party with this guy and wanting to adopt him.
If you want to know what I mean by that, please please please listen to "The Ballad of the Costa Concordia" Look, I know it’s 11 minutes long. You guys know I’m terrible at evangelizing, it’s not the point of this, but I feel obligated to try with this record, or at least this song. I think it’s an overlooked epic masterpiece, I really do. First half could be a Pink Floyd song, second half is a Ramones-like ode to giving up. Maybe it’s melodramatic, I dunno, maybe it’s millennial whining, but it moves me, it’s almost too damned intimate.
Stunningly to me, this is another “band” that started as a gifted individual, self-producing. Will Toledo adopted the name Car Seat Headrest because as a college student he fucking recorded songs in the back seat of his car. He assembled his first touring band via Craigslist. All this from a guy who looks like Cousin Greg from Succession.
Very compressed sound - when I say "punky" it's not like we're listening to a band on stage. I find the songs themselves so…attractive. They do this simple strummy thing, just a 2-minute wall of uninterrupted eighth notes, back and forth between no more than 2-3 chords (see the second half of "Vincent", the end of "Cosmic Hero"). Small caveat IMO is that the first half of the record is more memorable than the second - and it's long, over an hour, which is totally not punky.
Pitchfork writers:
On Teens of Denial, following a prolific run of Bandcamp releases, Toledo comes off like a passive avatar for the feelings he’s channeling. Even when he shakes off the doldrums long enough to rouse his audience into a singalong, it’s with a self-conscious—but nonetheless empowering—line like “I’ve got a right to be depressed!” The beautiful thing about this record is how it doesn’t demand our loyalty, only that we admit we feel the same way.