One Track Mind: Frank, AB

I have a dilemma. I want this post to be about a track by the Rural Alberta Advantage, but something gnaws at my conscience.

Fraxas and I started out this project, One Track Mind, to automate our music-recommendation process. And, so far, it's working swimmingly. The tracks that Fraxas highlighted are all awesome, and I've assembled a playlist with all the posts so far. Listening to it is like drinking a tall glass of eclecticism made physical.

My dilemma comes from a long-debated issue that has faced music buffs from the early mists of time:

Single or album?

Fraxas and I are busy guys. We love to talk music. But the day is short, and thanks to certain sources, the pool of good music is deeper than I can ever remember. One track a week is a small commitment, manageable, digestible, and enough to ignite a decent conversation. As much as I appreciate a good album, we confine these blog posts to the subject of a single track at a time.

Critics, performers, and connoisseurs from all across the historical spectrum vary widely on this essential question. Some acts, such as Arcade Fire and Radiohead, insist that the album is a holistic experience, going so far as to prohibit the use of their tracks on compilations or to boycott music videos. On the other hand, to be blunt, most songs by most artists are terrible. By extension, the same is true of most albums.

Industry analysts agree that the true cause of Big Music's demise was its long track-record of releasing albums padded with filler. Given the public's short attention span and appetite for easily digestible singles, the rise of filesharing technology was only the catalyst for an overdue drop in album sales.

Now, I like singles as much as the next guy. I consider an album “good” if about half its songs are re-listenable. I don't take the extreme of deleting the tracks I don't like –-after all, HDD space is cheap-- but I'd consider a lot of my favourite tracks to be a Single experience. This would be true of most of my prior posts.

That's not to say I don't have my favourite albums. Radiohead's OK computer, Firewater's recent album the Golden Hour, and-- I'm not ashamed to admit it-- Achtung Baby by U2 are best experienced from the moment you press play. These are rare accomplishments that tower over even the selfsame band's remaining oeuvre, let alone the wider music world.

So here's my dilemma. Hometowns, the debut album of Toronto band The Rural Alberta Advantage, is one of the best I've ever heard. The whole thing hangs together like the Dude's Room before his carpet was peed on. It's Canadian Rock in all its thematic, heroic, unapologetic, anthemic, melodious glory, complete with lyrics that evoke geography and virtuoso, spare-kit percussion. What am I supposed to do? I can't pick out a single track to write about. It's too difficult. As pretentious as Arcade Fire and Radiohead are for their championship of the Whole Album, I'm afraid that I have to join their ranks in this case. Hometowns is 38 minutes of bliss. That's not a lot is it?

Okay, maybe it is. I will pick a track at random and blog about it in the only way that would be appropriate. Haiku.

Track Title: Frank, AB
Artist: the Rural Alberta Advantage
Album Title: Hometowns

Pizzicato first.
Cymbals rise towards chorus.
Heartbeat speeds, wordless.

One Track Mind: Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Track title: Lovecraft in Brooklyn
Artist: Mountain Goats
Album: Heretic Pride

Whither H.P. Lovecraft? He of the overwrought, modern classical horror narratives, purveyor of all things "squamous" and "rugose?" He seems to be enjoying a minor renaissance among the net's intelligentsia, despite his bizarre proclivities towards eugenics and other outright violations of political correctness. Taste-makers from BoingBoing to MeFi peddle Cthulhu-themed tea-cozies and other mind-boggling, long-tail elements of niche hipster consumerism gone awry. Modern auteurs such as Mike Mignola and Guillermo del Toro borrow liberally from the fertile, feotid soil of ol' Howard Phillips' imagination, with admittedly entertaining results.

None of this excuses the truly execrecable aspects of Lovecraft's actual oeuvre, from his gender theories to his prose. And yet, despite his horribility, Lovecraft's stock continues to rise among present-day interwebbers. I can't explain it.

Now, something exists that might excuse these aspects of Lovecraft, and that is this song by the Mountain Goats.

H.P. Lovecraft, you can keep doing whatever it is you do, so long as you continue to posthumously inspire rock and roll such as this.

P.S. I like the double entendre of the song's rallying cry: "I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn." At first listen, I did not think of Lovecraft the Proper Noun, but rather "lovecraft" the possible neologism in the vein of "statecraft" or "songcraft." I feel like lovecraft in Brooklyn indeed.

One Track Mind: Rooks

Song Title: Rooks
Artist: Shearwater
Album: Rook

The AV Club is hosting the song in its review of the album here. Go listen. But first, one comment and a few warnings.

Comment: Shearwater is, by far, my favourite band with an ornithologist front-man.

Warning: That front-man is also a member of ingratiating indie darlings Okkervil River. Don't hold that against him; in fact, let that bump the latter band up a few notches. It worked for me; after thoroughly enjoying this album by Shearwater, I want back to Okkervil River after dismissing the "The Stage Names," and I don't regret it. Their follow-up, "The Stand Ins," is even better, but don't tell my hipster friends I think so.

Warning: Falsetto. Get your eardrums ready for some high-pitched male vocals. Don't let the similar, embarrassing vocal efforts of the Dandy Warhols, Beck, or David Usher taint you with prejudice. It works here, against all odds.

Warning: at 1:43 in this song, a pounding bass drum and a triumphant trumpet line enter after a dramatically descending melodic theme in the vocals. Like the unabashed guitar solo in a Dinosaur Jr. Song, it may cause you to take notice and stop working.

One Track Mind: Inaugural post

Welcome to One Track Mind.

Fraxas and I have challenged each other to blog about one musical track per week. The queue of our mutual music recommendations grows ever longer, and we need a way to manage the quality glut. This feature of the (soon to be resurrected) Shiny Things Distract Us web-log will be a regularly recurring laser-guided smartbomb of taste-making tuneage.

If a track appears here, it may be good, it may be bad, but one thing is certain: one of us wants the other to hear it. So let's drop the puck... now.

Track title: Death Watch
Artist: Alias
Album title: Resurgam

Fractured guitar notes clip at a striding rhythm. The melody explodes on the scene like a UFO tractor beam punching through the clouds. Alias calls to mind the triumphant moments of Boards of Canada's The Campfire Headphase.

Comments?