An elaboration and a juxtaposition

Mike wrote a nuanced hatchet piece on my treatment of O, Inverted World. Originally, Mine was meant, you know, as a rumination on the Shins in general, thus many of the things I said were more reflective of Chutes Too Narrow than the album I was supposed to be talking about.

My fault.

So here is my rejoinder to his rebuttal. Eat this Sheffler.

By the way, after doing so absolutely horribly-deplorably on the verbal section of my first GRE practice test, I'm forcing myself to use the startling number of vocab words I'd never seen before in these very posts, along with definitions. Look at rejoinder above for an example.

Tangentially, to ETS, lachrymose is not college level vocab, that's some archaic Herman Melville bullshit. Not even I, the most shamelessly verbose person I know, would use that in place of tearful. Get your act together.

Chief amongst Mike's complaints with the album, or perhaps with the Shins in general, are the sometimes overwrought lyrics. I see his point. Anyone who's ever tried to actually listen to a Bad Religion song knows this. But James Mercer never digs that deep into his thesaurus of tricks (Most Lucubratory Bad Religion line ever: "The anechoic nebula rotating in my veins is persuading me contritely to persist"), and those transgressive moments on Oh, Inverted World almost completely disappear in Chutes Too Narrow.

And secretly I want to bury in the yard
The grey remains of a friendship scarred

Most importantly, and for this Mercer is a savant, the lyrics always fit the melody and rhythm. Nothing ever feels forced. It all flows.

Except for "Turn a Square", That song shouldn't even be in there.

Mike called it the "mood," and I think that's it exactly. There's a visceral experience created on both albums that's utterly unique. Two of my favorite bands of late do it, the Shins and the Decemberists. Lyrics, Rhythm, instrumentation, instrument choice, tempo--all of that--fit so seamlessly, that it's not really just music any more. I'm not talking metaphysics, it's multimedia, it's narrative and characterization and mysticism and pageantry all at once. It's a feeling, fully realized.

Of course I was raised to gather courage from those
Lofty tales so tried and true and
If you're able I'd suggest it 'cause this
Modern thought can get the best of you.

This rather simple epitaph can save your hide your falling mind
Fate isn't what we're up against there's no design no flaws to find

Plus, they've got the cheeky, optimistic nihilism thing going, which is tough to pull off.

Let's contrast this with another area band, Helio Sequence. I've had this album for a long time, but never had the desire to give it a full working over because. Frankly, it's not worth it. However, in the context we're working on here, it will serve nicely to illustrate outlandish artsiness and landing just on the other side of pointless.

On the surface, they have the earmarks of a successful indie band. They're pretentious. They are connected, via drummer, to Modest Mouse (such connections being the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon for our generation). They're conspicuous music consumers: they've heard it all, they've been influenced by it all, they want it all on their record. Love and Distance has synth, it's got Brit pop melodies, it's got clap tracks. At times it even delves dangerously into euro-trash Kylie Minogue club-drug surreality. For fans of John Popper, it's got enough bluesy harmonica to make you never want to hear harmonica ever again.

Vocally, I can think of no one human more antithetical to the current indie scene than someone like Scott Weiland. Stone Temple Pilots, remember? Shirtless, writhing, decadent. Preoccupied with his own sexuality; enamored with the sound of his own voice?

That's what most of the vocals on this album sound like. Scott . . . Weiland.

What I'm getting at is, it's genre overload.

I know it's hip to flex nuts and show people the diversity of your influences. Everyone does it. Everyone lines up as many instruments as they can and starts playing.

In that milieu, the difference between cacophonous and mellifluous is slight, but you know it when you hear it.

As for their lyrics. GOD.

This is an SOS / SOS / can you hear me?

Look, if you're a two-man band and you have a pop-art CD cover, I'm paying you for arrogant and myopic profundities, not bland disco regurgitate.

We were all trying to just not care

The first clue that you're not a very good songwriter is when you use the word just haphazardly where it doesn't belong in order to preserve your rhyme scheme. When the same song talks about "lines on the mirror" at "a little get together," well that's just stupid.

So far, I've learned two things, your friends do coke and your songs suck.