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Fiona Apple: Limp

“You fondle my trigger, then you blame my gun”

What a line.

Yesterday evening I was compelled to listen to Fiona Apple’s first two albums, because of the ham-fisted production and arrangement on another album from another artist. And something happened. It may have been partly due me listening to them at about 20% more volume than I usually do. Whatever it was, it was one of those rare occasions where I ended up totally drowned, dominated and consumed by the music – asking me the question: Now, do you understand?

To which I answered: Yes, it’s all so obvious.

It’s amazing when music that I listened to and thought I knew, for years, suddenly slaps me in the face.

No Comments | Permalink | Tracks of the Day
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Organisations that don’t suck

There’s a new list on the internet. This time, the smartest 59 non-profit organisations that are on-line. Go and vote for your favourites. The Center for Church Communication is there, and through the wonders of links, I discovered another list: The Top 20 Web Sites For Church Communicators, which lists both secular and non-secular web sites.

1 Comment | Permalink | General Musings
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Kristin Hersh: In Shock

Why? For these reasons:

  • Kristin knows when and how to use acoustic and electric guitars
  • The dead simple thumping piano line which introduces the chorus
  • The sonic handover from the electric guitar to the strings
  • The strings, dammit
  • David Narcizo, the best drummer in the world, ever, plays on it
No Comments | Permalink | Tracks of the Day | Music of 2007
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Learn To Sing Like A Star

From the press release, plus obligatory ninthspace shenanigans and extra bits:

Kristin Hersh’s new album Learn To Sing Like A Star is released on 23rd January on Yep Roc in the USA, and on 29th January on 4AD everywhere else. It will be preceded, on January 22nd, by the In Shock EP, which features three exclusive non-album tracks. However In Shock can be purchased from iTunes right now and Yep Roc apparently screwed up on pre-orders which meant some people in the US got the album before Christmas 2006.

Learn To Sing Like A Star was produced by Kristin, recorded by Steve Rizzo and mixed by Trina Shoemaker. It features former Throwing Muses bandmate David Narcizo on drums, and beautiful string arrangements courtesy of Martin and Kim McCarrick.

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Tracklisting for Learn To Sing Like A Star:

  1. In Shock
  2. Nerve Endings
  3. Day Glo
  4. Christian Hearse
  5. Ice
  6. Under the Gun
  7. Piano 1
  8. Sugarbaby
  9. Peggy Lee
  10. Piano 2
  11. Vertigo
  12. Winter
  13. Wild Vanilla
  14. The Thin Man

And for In Shock:

  1. In Shock
  2. Windowpane
  3. Blackstone
  4. Poor Wayfaring Stranger

Here’s the video for In Shock:

And you can pre-order from Amazon:

No Comments | Permalink | Music of 2007
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The problem with RnB

My exposure to RnB is purposefully limited. I find it tedious and generic. Innovation quickly becomes the norm, and re-inventions are more marketing hype than genuine rebirth. RnB does, of course, have a relationship with rap music, and artists of both genres end up blurring the border. But I can live with this. What I cannot handle is the obsession with collaborations. Put simply, if collaborations are a necessity or an expectation, then they reflect on the artist as being someone who has little to say, or perhaps doesn’t have enough talent to carry a song or an album. The other purpose is to get validation through association, both within their artistic peer group and with their fans. It’s amateur, juvenile and stupid.

You might think that’s the main beef I have with RnB. It’s not. Taking second place is the number of tracks on an album. Gone are the days of 9 or 10 tracks on an album. If you have 18 tracks on your album, you’re nothing. Some artists even stretch themselves to double albums to fit in these essential collaborations. Then there’s the biggest mistake: interludes.

Pitchfork rightly points this out in today’s review of Ciara’s The Evolution: “Ciara’s spoken-word interludes are her own conceit, an assumption that we need her to tell us who she is.”

That’s what the songs should be for.

No Comments | Permalink | Music
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The Mac OS X effect

Let’s get this Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, RIM Blackberry comparison out of the way. The iPhone runs Mac OS X. That’s not a cut down version of Mac OS X. It’s the full thing, minus the usually bundled applications that you wouldn’t need to run on the iPhone. It has been heavily optimised and sits in less than 0.5GBytes of flash memory.

There’s concern that Apple won’t allow third party applications to run on the iPhone because of the possible disruption to the experience and the reliability of the device and of the Cingular network. The whole adoption of Mac OS X is a fundamental reason for this.

Now, I’m kind of okay with this, up to a point: the iPhone is the ideal platform for Widgets. Apple will probably bundle more widgets than they currently acknowledge existence of, but given the foundation of Widgets is likely to be CSS, HTML and Javascript, it’s practicable to open this aspect of the iPhone up to developers without risk of disrupting the overall experience. There is a major caveat to this: you can do things in Javascript that hog memory, CPU and there are potential memory leaks to account for.

With Mac OS X running on Macs, a developer gets pretty quick feedback from users if anything is wrong with their Widget. It’s also fairly easy to identify and shut down misbehaving widgets. This might not be the case with the iPhone, but Safari could stall due to a misbehaving website, or a bug or exploit in Safari, so something that permits corrective action to be identified and taken will be available.

What’s going to happen then? I think Apple will be the sole provider for fully-fledged applications (i.e. not Widgets), and frankly, if they’re anything like we’ve already seen, they’ll be great. Mac OS X Leopard will probably launch before the iPhone is released, which means all the new features expected in Apple Mail and iCal will be accounted for in the iPhone. Mac OS X Leopard should also include the long awaited Dashcode, Apple’s development kit for Mac OS X Widgets. It will be surprising if there aren’t starting templates for iPhone Widgets, together with guidelines for developing and testing on the iPhone. I also reckon that the iPhone will provide custom Javascript hooks into common gesture events.

1 Comment | Permalink | All things Apple
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Use it or Lose it

Poor Cisco Systems: Last minute discussions between Cisco, apparent owners of the iPhone trademark, and Apple Inc. were being held right up until 8pm the night before the launch of the Apple iPhone. However these discussions ultimately failed in an agreement over usage, and Apple went and launched with the name even as discussions were continuing. Now Cisco are suing Apple.

If you’re clued up on marketing and trademarks this raises two interesting facts:

  1. The ownership of the iPhone trademark by Cisco is under dispute because they failed to actively use it in the designated period, following their purchase of InfoGear in 2000. However, Cisco were granted a six month extension which enabled them to sticker an existing product with an iPhone logo.
  2. By using the iPhone name, Apple are doing three things: they’re actively comparing the two products – Cisco’s is a VoIP device, Apple’s is anything you need it to be. Furthermore, they’re creating more PR and publicity through the ensuing dispute. Finally, they’re institutionalising the name so that it will become as well known as the iPod.

It may well be that Apple and Cisco will eventually settle the dispute, either financially, or through Apple renaming it something like the Apple Phone. But everyone will still refer to it as the iPhone.

2 Comments | Permalink | General Musings | All things Apple
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Sally Shapiro: I’ll Be By Your Side (Rude66 808 Remix)

Sally Shapiro (not her real name) and producer Johan Agebjörn combine to make one of the contradictory albums of 2006. The sound of Disco Romance can only be created by those who understand the desperate melancholy of Pet Shop Boys’ Rent. To quote Pitchfork: “Disco Romance turns the Smiths’ happy-music-with-sad-lyrics formulation on its head – and then you dance to it.”

This remix of I’ll Be By Your Side takes this music from the eighties and crisply propels it into the nineties, but to fully appreciate it, you need to hear it in the context of the whole album, because this closing track also opens the album – where it’s presented in its original form. The album requires careful repetitive listening, without doing so you’ll think the album is one prolonged song, with one idea. It’s the subtle differences between tracks, the detailed production and the tiniest twinkling decorations that make this more than an Annie clone. I’m pretty sure Disco Romance will be one of my favourites of 2007.

[Disco Romance – iTunes UK]
[Pitchfork Review]
[Stylus Magazine Review]

1 Comment | Permalink | Tracks of the Day | Music of 2006
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