NSFL
(Not Safe for Lab)
All of this music has either been explicitly rejected by members of my lab (Panda Bear, Animal Collective, CocoRosie, every hip-hop album with any rap in it), dismissed entirely as part of a larger and unacceptable genre (rap), or contains suggestive/nsfw lyrics (also rap). A labmate once summed up the music that I bring into the lab as having about a “13% success rate. About 87% unlistenable, anyway.” If that isn’t enough to appeal to our darkest elitist “only appreciable by a truly refined palate” tendencies, most of the music also has a critical stamp of approval, so suck it up and pretend you like this music; it’s good for you. I’d’ve made the argument that the music is truly awesome, which it is, but the too-cool context would make me look like a poseur. Oh, well.
2. The Sound of Science – The Beastie Boys
3. Bounce That – Girl Talk
4. The Crystal Cat – Dan Deacon
5. I Wonder – Kanye West
6. Peacebone – Animal Collective
7. Clang Boom Steam – Tom Waits
8. Not for
9. Song Song Song – Final Fantasy
10. Take Pills – Panda Bear
11. Bamboo Banga – M.I.A.
12. We Share Our Mother’s Health – The Knife
13. Kidz Are So Small – Deehoof
14. Truth Is – Brother Ali
15. Duplexes of the Dead – The Fiery Furnaces
16. We Tigers – Animal Collective
17. Knife – Grizzly Bear
18. O Superman – Laurie Anderson
I don’t know if there is some sort of “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” anniversary this year or if there has been some other meaningful event has brought about a resurgence of critical press for this decade-old indie flashpoint, but it remains an amazing album. Anand can probably speak more to the album’s origins as inspired by The Diary of Anne Frank, but all but the most obvious references are lost on me. Regardless of the inspiration, it combines clever, noisy lo-fi instrumentation with sincere, unironic lyrics in a somewhat whiny voice, all of which makes it unacceptable to my lab. The second track’s opening lines “I love you, Jesus Christ/Jesus Christ, I love you, yes, I do” were probably the last straw.
2. The Sound of Science – The Beastie Boys
My love for this song and the Beastie Boys will undoubtedly cloud my description, but how could you not love a song that starts with a minor key slide and what sounds like one of those little cylindrical toys that make a mooing sound before transforming halfway to a straight-forward rap set to a Beatles sample from “The End.” Of course, those things do not appeal to everyone, and besides the fact that the rap makes it unacceptable, the non-musical bridge is another lab deal-breaker. If you don’t think Paul’s Boutique is an inspired crazy-innovative album, take a look at http://paulsboutique.info/Sounds_Of_Science or explore the other songs for samples and references. It is mind- (and copyright-) blowing.
3. Bounce That – Girl Talk
Gregg Gillis might be an asshole, but as the brains behind Girl Talk, he is exactly my kind of asshole. Remixing others’ work into a startling new whole, combining “The Best of My Love” with LCD Soundsystem, Elastica, and Britney Spears (in this song, alone!), he took the mash-up to another level, defying overly restrictive interpretations of copyright law, much like the Beasties before him. Released on the aptly named Illegal Art label, Gillis’s music could be classified as part of the culture jamming movement (though my brief google didn’t turn up any specific connection), which wikipedia describes as “a resistance movement to cultural hegemony and the homogenous nature of popular culture, executed by means of guerrilla communication.” I think it only fits that definition if you get his album through non-traditional means, like file-sharing (or a mix-CD), so I guess it does fit. My lab isn’t “into” challenging hegemonies, though. They just participate in them, like automatons (or Anand-atons, as I call them) programmed to accept the corporate pablum unquestioningly.
4. The Crystal Cat – Dan Deacon
Often nonsensical, fast, and ridiculous, (Baltimore-based!) Dan Deacon’s electronic freak-outs are designed solely as entertainment, appealing directly to the brain’s pleasure centers. The noisy, chipmunks-on-speed, no-time-to-breathe, pure-candy style seems to give my labmates headaches. Though the internets seem to think Dan’s saying “I’m gonna get my bathing suit on,” I prefer my interpretation, in which he is wearing a pantsuit. Decide for yourself.
5. I Wonder – Kanye West
I love Kanye. He has a great sense of humor and, despite a legendarily over-inflated sense of self-importance, has the sense to explore masters of other genres for inspiration. Each of his albums immediately fail the no-rap criterion for lab play, but his raps are so unabashedly fun, that I’m tempted to foist it upon them, anyway. I mean he makes “blouse” rhyme with “aroused” in this song. Listen for it. I almost fell down when I first heard it.
6. Peacebone – Animal Collective
You can imagine that my lab couldn’t tolerate even the first few seconds of this, the opening track of Animal Collective’s Strawberry
7. Clang Boom Steam – Tom Waits
Just a brief sample of Waits’s music, this is a track that combines all the characteristics of his music that my lab finds abhorrent: his gravelly voice, the unusual and grating noises, and a lack of discernible melody. While the melodylessness is a rare trait of his, and the noises only occasional, his voice is both ubiquitous and central to his music, so you can imagine my lab won’t like a whole album. I like this percussive, rhythmic track. If you think you could like him, too, I recommend his album “Real Gone” and probably his recent three CD set, but I haven’t listened to all of that, yet.
8. Not for
I don’t know if the themes of female oppression and empowerment pervade all their music or just this album, but I’m a sucker for a good feminist story and this short track is haiku-like in its incisive simplicity. It’s only lyrics, “You can meet me on the corner/where you found me/I’m not for sale anymore,” are suggestive of a larger context, but also are a fully contained short story. While this track might actually pass in the lab, most of the rest of the album is too weird, featuring video game samples, repetitive structures, and “little girl voices.” One of my labmates summed up CocoRosie in a pretty damning way, “I just don’t see the art in this.”
9. Song Song Song – Final Fantasy
From Final Fantasy’s He Poos Clouds album, which is ostensibly inspired by Dungeons and Dragons’ eight schools of magic (this one is supposedly inspired by the “abjuration” school, wtf?), “Song Song Song” could be a feminist anthem. Opening with verses narrated from a sexist societal viewpoint and concluding with the admonition “Don’t you turn to motherhood so fast, you have been blinded/There’s a word for all you keep inside, and though you try to hide it, we will write it,” the message of autonomy and rebellion is universal. I wonder if homosexuals identify with the feminist movement, in general, with its rejection of externally-imposed gender roles and restrictive expectations. Since internet lore suggests the first verse used to begin with an opposing gender identifier (a son rather than a daughter), I’m thinking the parallels are purposeful. An out gay man, himself, Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett thus joins the ranks of my other gay celebrity heroes: George Takei, Ed Droste (of Grizzly Bear, featured later), Tim Gunn, and Abraham Lincoln (controversial!). If you think this song might be permissible in a laboratory environment, take any other track off the album and give it a listen. It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard (and probably like something most people are willing to live their lives without hearing).
10. Take Pills – Panda Bear
A song undone in the lab by its use of repetitive noises, amorphous structure, and through-a-tunnel vocals, “Take Pills” has a special place in my heart as my favorite track from a favorite album. I could listen to Person Pitch every day almost any time of day and hear something different, lovely, and cheerful. Beach Boys comparisons seem to be the necessity in any review of the album, but the tight harmonies appeal to me more here than they have on my, admittedly limited, forays into the Beach Boys back catalog. I think the song’s central (or at least title-inspiring) sentiment, “I don’t want for us to take pills, anymore, not that it’s bad/../’cause we’re stronger if we don’t need ’em,” a cautiously offered desire to be free of chemical dependencies, is shared by anyone with their own preferred chemical aides and manages to both acknowledge their value, their occasional necessity, and the desire to stand without them.
11. Bamboo Banga – M.I.A.
Sri Lankan hip-hop is apparently another genre my lab does not like to indulge, but M.I.A.’s beats in this track and throughout this album are infectious. My heartbeat starts to sync to the music within the first 30 seconds of the song, and I can’t help doing the white boy headbob by the end of the first minute. I don’t know what she’s singing about when she says “A big timer/it’s a bamboo banga,” but I sing along, and at 3:45-3:55, I get a chill. There’s something direct and primal in her music that gets me on a visceral level. If this has any appeal to you, listen to “Paper Planes,” as well, a song that uses gunshots and cash register sound effects to succinctly critique needless and government-sanctioned violence. Or at least, that’s what I’m hearing.
12. We Share Our Mother’s Health – The Knife
Silent Shout features creepy, modified vocals throughout to achieve a sinister mood that could soundtrack a Poltergeist sequel, but apparently not pipetting. To be fair, this song was introduced to me through its video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=617ANIA5Rqs), which tells a story left ambiguous by the song, but which is perfectly matched. The video suggests the systematic oppression and abuse, if not massacre, of an entire people, which becomes a cycle in which the oppressed are complicit. Of course, I could be incredibly off-base (I’d love to hear other’s interpretations), but to me it brings to mind the imperial system’s use in Africa and the persistent, now internally-imposed oppressive regimes that have been the legacy of imperial control in several nations. How could this album come from the group that made “Heartbeats?”
13. Kidz Are So Small – Deehoof
This is another sample-heavy, vocally and lyrically bizarre song that my lab could not bear to hear more than once, though I think we surprisingly made it through the whole album. Fascinating and constantly evolving percussion, Japanese scatting, and a dog bark make this a super-fun listen.
14. Truth Is – Brother Ali
The Undisputed Truth’s clearly spoken curse words forced an early end (first 30 seconds) to this CD in the lab. I should really listen to these albums before I put them in the lab stereo, but it’s hard to resist when you really want to hear it and that’s the only option for CD-listening while you’re setting up a PCR reaction. I usually dismiss critically-acclaimed Minneapolis-based Muslim albino rappers, but Brother Ali is the exception that proves the rule, and his talent with words is on full display in this track.
15. Duplexes of the Dead – The Fiery Furnaces
Like Destroyer’s music, I don’t think I understand what is going on in most of the Fiery Furnaces’ canon, but it doesn’t seem to matter. A serious understanding of the song’s content is secondary to how awesome the resulting music is. The musical hook, which sounds like it might be a violin playing backwards, is enough to keep me coming back to the song until “I covered my head and went to the office pool/I dipped in reverent a re-soled mule” makes sense.
16. We Tigers – Animal Collective
Some would say that this is an Animal Collective-heavy disc, with two AC songs and a Panda Bear track, but to them I say “you are probably right.” But like “Clang Boom Steam” for Tom Waits, I feel like “We Tigers” crystallizes both what I love about Animal Collective and what my lab hates. It’s weird and hard to understand and there’s screaming and shouting and strange sounds, but it’s also compelling, driving, and somehow joyful, “Everyone is welcome!/Everyone is welcome!/Everyone is welcome…” (despite the internet telling me he’s saying “Everybody’s bloated.” I’ll believe what I want to believe.)
17. Knife – Grizzly Bear
While much of this album is beautiful, I think its low-key, sedate pace and meandering quality (hear the slow, drum-and-piano-driven end of this track) put my lab off completely. While I have had to give most of their Yellow House album time to grow on me to appreciate, “Knife” stands out all on its own.
18. O Superman – Laurie Anderson
Over 25 years old now, “O Superman” was originally part of Laurie Anderson’s performance art piece
