#the shift in cultural references for sonic starting with adventure

[latin-dr-robotnik]

What went wrong with Classic Sonic’s music in Sonic Forces? (ft. beevean)

The following is a project I’ve been cooking for some weeks, trying to find out some reasons behind the general lackluster feeling that surrounds Classic Sonic’s music in Sonic Forces. As you may have spotted already, this is not a solo project, since I’ve had the opportunity to talk about this very same topic with @beevean and she raised quite a couple of interesting points that I’m going to bring up as we go through. 

Also, Spanish speakers: you can catch the Spanish version of this post here, it’s probably a more polished experience with additional text.

Long post below, so, bring up a ladder and a boombox, I’ll explain along the way. (there’s also a tl;dr at the bottom if you are that type of person)

Sonic Forces stands as a divisive point in the Sonic fandom, that much we all know, and we are not going to discuss the game’s general quality at all on this post. But we are going to take a solid look at Classic Sonic and, most importantly, its music, since I consider that’s the most clear symptom of a bigger problem with Classic Sonic in general, in this post-Generations Modern Sonic world.

A quick look at Classic Sonic

When Classic Sonic debuted in Sonic Generations (2011) as this new-but-also-old Sonic, gaming as a whole was still being bombarded with this “retro-revival movement” that brought back many classic franchises (like classic Mega Man with MM9 and 10 after a decade since MM8), and SEGA itself was in the middle of that train with the recently released Sonic 4: Episode 1 (2010). While Sonic 4 tried to marry Sonic’s current style with classic level tropes and even Genesis-inspired music in a seamless way (showing Sonic’s physical transition from his Sonic 3 days to Sonic Adventure as a smooth one), this new “Classic Sonic” guy in Generations suffered from a mixed message about his origins: is he Sonic from the past, from an alternate universe, or both? Is his music supposed to sound like arrangements of his classic 16-bits tunes or just modern-sounding remixes like the rest of the soundtrack? The fandom still debates about it to this day.

This all led to the introduction of a character that, although considered a “Sonic” like the other “Modern” one, could not establish his own identity beyond Generations’ anniversary-title plot threads. No unique music style, no unique traits, he was just a simpler Sonic.

Major manifestation of the Classic problem.

Fast-forward some years to November 2017, Sonic Forces’ release date. Besides gameplay, story and character criticisms, the music of Forces turned out to be quite controversial for a part of the fandom. Although I personally consider the Avatar songs as top-tier Sonic music, I share similar concerns as the rest about the rest of the game’s music, specially the Classic Sonic level themes. 

With Forces, it seems the composers managed to solve some of Gens’ Classic Sonic music problems, as this time there was a better and more consistent attempt at making Classic’s music sound more at home with the “Genesis days” tunes, but even then the composers fell into other traps that ended up being more damaging to the final product.

Years later after the game’s release, I finally brought up this very same topic during a conversation with beevean (I encourage you that, if you find the following snippets interesting, read the entire conversation), and she had the following thoughts to share as to why Classic Sonic’s music was so... underwhelming:

the classic music in forces is the weakest part of the ost, some tracks are okay while others suck, and the main reason for this is that they hired the wrong people for the job

Okay, that wasn’t a fair cut on my part. She talks a lot more about each and every aspect behind the music, and about the people that composed it, she had the following to say:

Okay, about Forces’ music. First of all, the Classic tracks were handled by two people: Tomoya Ohtani, who also composed pretty much 90% of the OST and has been working solo since 2013 (relevant later), and Naofumi Hataya, one of the two geniuses behind Sonic 2 8-bit’s and Sonic CD’s OSTs (plus some miscellaneous work in Heroes, Colors, Generations, etc.). If you loved tracks like Sky High, Palmtree Panic or Stardust Speedway, you have to thank him.

This is already a reason as to why the Classic music in Forces doesn’t resemble the music in the Genesis games. While I can understand that it would have been impossible to hire Masato Nakamura again, Jun Senoue would have been good for the job, having composed music for Sonic 3 and most importantly Sonic 3D Blast. But apparently Senoue was MIA until 2019, so who knows.

I’d like to point out that Naofumi Hataya’s involvement will play a bigger role later in this post, as we keep searching for what went wrong and we look for a potential solution when adressing Classic Sonic.

Beevean continued with:

There are mainly two problems here:

1) some of the tracks just don’t fit their stage. I already mentioned that Ghost Town sounds way too happy for a city under attack by giant robots. Death Prison sounds vaguely Egyptian and the difference with the original, bass-heavy composition is staggering. Chemical Flow is the most generic thing and would fit everything and nothing, and again comparing it with the original iconic track is just sad. I think the reason Casino Forest and Iron Fortress are my favorite Classic tracks is that they go very well with their respective stages. This is a problem Adventure 2 had as well, associating a particular style to a particular character, and while I think Forces did it better, for me the priority should be fitting a level.

2) Ohtani was once a very versatile composer (the guy could go in one game from Wave Ocean to Crisis City, for example), but since Lost World, the first game in which he had the responsibility of an entire soundtrack, his style quickly became “anime”. Runners’ tracks? “This sounds like an anime opening!”. How do you recognize his only track in TSR? It’s the one that sounds like an anime opening and uses a synth.

And look, I love Ohtani, he has nothing but my respect, and he made some of my absolute favorite tracks in the series. But I do think they’re making him work too much - he’s the best when he can work with at least another person, and has the chance to span a little. I also think his style is incompatible with the Classic music, which was never anime: even at its mellowest in Sonic 1 it always had a little jazzy/new jack swing touch. Basically the only thing they got right in this game is having a wicked bassline :P

It ain’t *only* the composers’ fault

Following beevean’s words, I’d like to add my own take on the problem. You see, I do agree that the composers maybe weren’t up to the task of nailing the classic Genesis tunes’ vibe (Hataya got real close, though), but at the same time I do think they weren’t properly oriented or didn’t have enough time to keep reiterating on the frameworks they were working with. Like beevean said, some of the tracks improve quite a bit after leaving behind that mixed as hell “almost Genesis but not quite” soundfont.

The composers will work on what they were told to make and I have a strong, albeith unconfirmed, feeling that the Classic Sonic composers where asked to “make it sound retro” by someone higher up on the project management chain, and after checking on their progress, simply said “meh, it’s retro enough, no one will notice”.

The “make it sound retro” argument, in my opinion, opens up a big discussion about Sonic music, because there is no easy way to make it “retro” with Sonic. You just can’t pump out a few nostalgic chiptunes and call it a day. Sonic music may have originated back in the 16-bit days of the Sega Genesis, but his identity is so much more than just that Genesis FM sound. I personally believe, similar to another thing beevean point out, that Forces focused too much on sounding “retro enough” instead of fitting each track better to each level theme or even tap into what really made Sonic appealing on the classic days. 

This last point is something that SEGA struggled a lot during the past decade, they introduced Classic Sonic as an entity separated from the current Sonic, yet they simply don’t give Classic Sonic enough development as it’s own character. He’s there because he’s there and we don’t know what to expect from him beyond “he represents the good old days”. But not even SEGA itself knows what that means.

So, what really makes up Classic Sonic’s identity?

For me this is the true heart of the post. Knowing full well what makes Classic Sonic should be the key to every project that features him. 

There are lots of points to make about Classic Sonic’s identity and how to establish him should he return once again on a 3D Sonic title (not even using the “modern” anymore, and I personally wouldn’t like to see him again on a 3D title for another decade, if ever), but seeing as the main topic of this post has been music, I’m going to focus on what music style makes Classic Sonic shine.

I already said that throwing some generic chiptunes won’t work, but I DO think that Genesis-inspired tunes can still work, should they stick to what made the classics so great.

And what is that? Well, you have several options here: you can choose from more J-Pop and jazzy tunes to some sick R&B and New Jack Swing beats, all the way through to late 80′s Acid House and wacky 90′s Dance music, even cinematic-like scores and ambient sounds.

Personally, I think the heavy R&B (with its fair share of New Jack Swing) influences are a constant throughout Sonic’s first years, and that kind of sound is one that goes well with his cool attitude™. Spring Yard Zone has always been referred to as “16-bit Every Little Step”, while Sonic CD... well, and Sonic 3... well... JAM. Even Masa’s demos of Sonic 2 feature some sick basses that aren’t all that different from what I was thinking (Chemical Plant and Metropolis come to mind). Sonic CD (JP, also the work of Naofumi Hataya and Masafumi Ogata) in particular springs up to my mind as the purest representation on everything that Sonic was about on his old days, but “pure” doesn’t necessarily mean “refined”, so I think the Sonic CD style coupled with some more smooth Pop for emotional moments (straight from Nakamura’s school of smoothness) and harder 90′s raves for boss fights (think how iconic Stardust Speedway Bad Future has become) could make up the perfect blend for Classic Sonic to follow in terms of style points, but also considering the general themes of each zone (Wacky Workbench being this Dance-heavy zone was a stroke of genius if you ask me, the same with Spring Yard being a jazzy urbanscape.)

Sonic is a product of the late 80′s and 90′s pop culture, he has the moves of MC Hammer, Bobby Brown, and of course, Michael Jackson (also his shoes). As such, no generic “retro nostalgic” tune will fit with him, unlike many other gaming franchises. By embracing Classic Sonic’s wacky nature gems like Sonic Mania happened, and just like I pointed it out to beevean, if you were there the week that game was first announced, you probably saw how much people were gushing about Studiopolis Act 1 sounding so much like Sonic CD with that funky beat. People instantly knew that was the Classic Sonic music they wanted to hear.

And just to make this section even better, I recently asked beevean about her thoughts on what makes Classic Sonic’s music identity. I now urge you to go and read her full analysis because it’s so deep yet very accessible, as I’ll be collecting just a few parts of her response for this post. Trust me, that post is so useful, go and reblog it now, I’ll wait here.

About Classic Sonic’s music styles, beevean says:

So… which is the style that fits Classic Sonic better?

The big love letter to the Classic series that is Mania used CD as an inspiration, and while Mania’s OST is excellent and one of my favorites… I don’t automatically associate New Jazz Swing with Classic Sonic. Before Mania, it was only in one game, the odd one in the bunch too.

3D Blast is my favorite Genesis soundtrack, and as I said it combines the best of two worlds (plus it’s just full of bangers), but it influenced the next era more than the Classic one. The same could be said for the American OST of CD - and besides, tracks like this are nothing like Sonic anyway.

Sonic 1 is the first one and all, but that mellow style fits that particular game more than Classic as a whole, I think the closest OST to this style was Advance 1, actually - another slow-paced, simple game.

So the choice is narrowed down to the ultra-popular Sonic 2 and the refined Sonic 3 & Knuckles. And I’ll be honest, while I think S3&K has higher “highs” compared to S2… my brain immediately jumps to the latter. When I think of Classic Sonic, I think of Genesis brass (the real deal, not that fake synth they used in Forces), twang basses, a swingy rhythm (too many to choose lol), and tons of energy.

Only one Classic track in Forces came close to this description. The others sound more like either a pale imitation of Sonic 1 or modern tracks with a bad soundfont, and that’s when they’re not a complete insult (no i won’t link to it you know what i’m talking about :V).

Author’s note: it’s been, like, two months and she still refuses to talk about Faded Hills, lol

Author’s note: sorry, beev.

(TL;DR) Closing thoughts.

So, what did go wrong with Classic Sonic’s music in Sonic Forces?

A lack of definition on what Classic Sonic even is about, carried from Generations, made the task of defining his style more difficult.

The composers weren’t up to the task, or they were simply asked to make Classic Sonic “sound retro”, generic sound be damned. 

This also means management of the project wasn’t that interested in the Classic portion, or they ran out of time to make it better. This is something that the entire game seemed to have a problem with as well.

The music didn’t fit the stages, and even if it did, Classic’s identity was all over the place. He was there just to be there, and his music suffered from that (compare it to Mania).

Tomoya Ohtani (often credited as the maker of the arguably worst tracks of Classic Sonic in the game) has experienced a shift on his musical style over the last few years that led to his tracks start sounding very similar to each other, this, coupled with the fact he was working on the other 2/3rds of the game’s OST, caused his Classic tracks in particular to suffer.

Classic Sonic’s tracks didn’t take from the 90′s Pop and R&B influences that plagued the old games, and as such, the current Classic Sonic doesn’t have an identity as strong as the original 90′s Sonic. Beevean’s take on this point involves Classic Sonic tracks that feature strong, legit Genesis brass, with twang basses, swingy rhythm and tons of energy.

Once again, I’d like to thank beevean for providing such insightful information and opinions (you can clearly see we both tend to have different takes on what made Sonic back in the 90′s, but in the end agreed to a similar set of requirements to make good Classic music, like basslines and lots of energy), which helped this post a lot more than you can imagine. I wanted to post this back in late January, but the extra time allowed me to keep thinking, searching and listening, while also opened the door to ask beev again about her opinions. This is probably the first “big” article I’ve written this year, and I hope to return soon enough with more. 

[aion-rsa]

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2, Episode 2 Easter Egg and Reference

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Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Lower Decks, Season 2, Episode 2, “Kayshon, His Eyes Open”

In The Next Generation episode “The Most Toys,” Kivas Fajo tried to keep Data forever. The idea that someone thought it was okay to “collect” was an oddly self-referential concept for Star Trek even in the 1990s. Just like now, the idea of a Star Trek collectible was a thing hardcore Star Trek fans thought about all the time. But, other than the fact that everyone would actually want to “collect” Data, “The Most Toys” wasn’t actually about Star Trek collectibles. 

But, the newest Star Trek: Lower Decks episode, kind of is? In “Kayshon, His Eyes Open,” the crew of the Cerritos encounters one of those famous collectors, while the crew of the Titan deal with some very familiar transporter clones. It’s almost like this is an episode that is filled with as many Easter eggs on purpose. Here’s everything we caught.

Beta Shift 

When Jet joins the Lower Deckers at the start of the episode, it’s implied they are on “Beta Shift.” This seems to check-out with Season 1, in which it was clear that the Cerritos was on a four-shift duty rotation, which included the night shift known as “Delta Shift.” (This idea was first introduced in the TNG episode “Chain of Command,” an episode Lower Decks LOVES to reference.)

Sonic Showers 

Although sonic showers are referenced a lot in Star Trek, we’ve only seen sonic showers a few times. The first time was in The Motion Picture, and since then we’ve only glimpsed the showers. The visual effect for the communal sonic showers here is very similar to TMP, but the idea of communal showering for the lower officers vaguely references the novelization of The Motion Picture, too. If you know, then you know.

Collectors

Again the idea of various “Collectors” in the galaxy references Kivas Fajo and “The Most Toys.” This is what Freeman means by “they all tried to collect Data.”

Dr. Migleemo

 Notably, the Cerritos’s counselor, the avian Dr. Migleemo returns in this episode, once again, voiced by Paul. F. Tompkins. Echoing Counselor Troi’s non-standard uniform, Migleemo appears to wear whatever he wants while on duty, even sitting on the bridge.

Items Owned By the Collector, Take 1

When the landing party for the Cerritos first boards the ship, just in the first room alone there are a ton of Easter eggs. Getting all of these is gonna be tricky, but we’re gonna give it a go. Here’s what you can spot when you pause the first couple of shots in the first room of the Collector’s Ship.

Captain Picard paper mache head from “Captain Picard Day” (TNG, “The Pegasus”)

The Game (TNG, “The Game”)

Baseball Bat and ball (Possible DS9 Sisko reference?)

Giant Unicorn (Possible Blade Runner reference?)

Marty McFly’s Shoes (Back to the Future)

Terran Empire Flag (TOS, “Mirror, Mirror) 

Khan’s Necklace (The Wrath of Khan)

Valiant flight recorder (TOS, “Where No Man Has Gone Before)

Gold TOS Uniform

Giant Pink Tribble (TAS, “More Tribbles, More Troubles)

M-113 lifeform (TOS, “The Man Trap.” Also, this is AT LEAST the third time the Salt Vampire has appeared on Lower Decks. And, having the M-113 lifeform as a collectible not only references “The Man Trap,” but also, “The Squire of Gothos,” in which your boy Trelane had an M-113 creature as a museum piece, too!)

Special Shout-Out: Betazoid Gift Box 

First appearing in TNG’s “Haven,” this was a talking box that was meant to “bond” with the person who got the gift. 

The existence of this artifact here is also possible a double reference to two other things: In “Haven,” the face of the Gift Box was played by Armin Shimmerman, more famous later as Quark on DS9. But, on top of that, back in 1994 the Star Trek: The Next Generation Collectible Card Game (published by Decipher Inc.) had a very powerful card based on the Betazoid Gift Box. If you played the game, you know this was a rare and useful card that was well…very collectible.

Special Shout-Out: Whose trombone is that?

We briefly see a trombone in one of the collector’s cases, which seems like an easy reference to Riker. But, which one? Because this episode also directly references “Second Chances,” and Will Riker’s duplicate Thomas Riker, it’s possible that this is the trombone that Will gave to Thomas at the end of that TNG episode. Briefly, here’s the case for that being Thomas Riker’s trombone: In the DS9 episode “Defiant” Thomas Riker tried to steal the Defiant, but was later arrested by Starfleet. Presumably, this would mean all of his stuff would have been confiscated, including his trombone! 

Keyshon is a Tamarian 

Tamarians or “the Children of Tama” originate in the TNG episode “Darmok.” In case you forgot, Picard cracked the case with this species by learning they spoke exclusively through metaphor and analogy. Mariner mocks this by pointing out all you have to do is listen for “context clues.”

Riker loves…Rogue Squadron?

Riker tells Boimler to use “attack pattern delta,” on the Pakled ship. This seems to be a reference to The Empire Strikes Back in which Luke tells the snowspeeders of Rogue Squadron, “Attack pattern delta, go now!” 

Items Owned By the Collector, Take 2

Here’s another go at seeing how many Easter eggs were jammed into like less than 2-minutes of screentime.

Kataan Probe (TNG, “The Inner Light”)

Vulcan lirpa weapon (TOS, “Amok Time,”)

Klingon bat’leth (TNG, DS9, Voyager et al.)

Andorian dueling weapon (Enterprise, “United.”)

Shark in a Tank (A reference to the real-life artist Damien Hirst, probably?)

Mars Rover 

Kadis-kot game set (Voyager)

Château Picard wine crate (Picard)

Isomagnetic disintegrator (Worf’s bazooka from Insurrection)

Tendi is later holding:

A trident scanner (Scotty loved this thing in TOS)

And…a Kurlan naiskos (TNG, “The Chase,” a very big episode for canon!)

Kahless’ fornication helmet 

Tendi says that this specific Klingon artifact is clearly something Kahless (the Klingon Jesus) wore while…well, the name speaks for itself. But which Kahless? Hmmm? The fake clone Kahless from “Rightful Heir?” or the real-deal Kahless from the 9th century? The Kahless reference gets doubly meta, because, as you’ll see later, Lower Decks eventually references the very first reference in canon to Kahless, too. 

Data’s Picasso-esque painting of Spot

Barely visible, just as Mariner and the gang are trying to escape, we see Data’s painting of his cat Spot, first seen in the TNG episode “Inheritance,” and later in the background in the movie Generations.

Boimler’s description of the Enterprise-D

Let’s combine two scenes here! In two pivotal moments in the episode, Boimler is defending the honor and relative coolness of the TNG adventures on the Enterprise-D, which he just calls “the D.” Here’s what it seems like he’s referencing.

“They went to other dimensions… (This seems to reference the idea that “The D” did go to another dimension in the episode “Where No One Has Gone Before.” It also could reference “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” but nobody would remember that.)

“They fought the Borg…” (This references “Q, Who,” “The Best of Both Worlds,” and “Descent.”

“They insurrected!” (This seems to reference Star Trek: Insurrection, which was not the Enterprise-D, but instead, the Enterprise-E! The Lower Decks writers surely know this. Why doesn’t Boimler know this? Maybe the game of telephone in the Federation is a little inaccurate? In LDS Season 1, the news of Data’s brother seemed to travel…very slowly?)

“They had a regular string quartet.” (This references several TNG episodes, notably “Sarek,” and again, “Inheritance,”) 

“Riker was jamming on the trombone” (A ton of TNG, including “The Next Phase,” “Future Imperfect,” and of course, “Second Chances.”)

“Catching love disease” (Probably TNG’s “The Naked Now”)

“Acting in plays” (This mostly references Riker acting in one of Crusher’s plays in TNG’s “Frame of Mind.”)

The remains of Spock Two?

In the spooky skeleton room, we see what appears to be a giant humanoid skeleton wearing a blue TOS–era Starfleet uniform. Who is this? The best guess? This is the giant Spock clone from The Animated Series episode “The Infinite Vulcan.”

Excalbian Bones and Abe Lincoln

Toward the end of the episode, the gang is trapped in a diorama that seems to have an alien and a skeleton of Abraham Lincoln. This references the TOS episode “The Savage Curtain” in which the Excalbians produced copies of Lincoln, along with Kahless and Surak. This episode was the first reference in Trek canon to both Kahless and Surak, and so, basically created the backstories of both Vulcan and Klingon cultures through historically inaccurate versions of those people. Funny, right? 

Transporter clone 

When Boimler beams the away team out through the distortion field, Riker says “oh, I’ve heard this tune before.” This references the TNG banger “Second Chances,” in which Riker’s transporter duplicate was discovered on a planet years after the fact. In this sense, Boimler’s transporter clone got off easy. Also, the idea that one of the transporter duplicates makes different decisions that the other also references “Second Chances,” in which “Thomas” Riker ends up being a different person than Will. The idea that both can’t serve on the Titan anymore might reference the idea that the TNG writing staff considered killing off the “first” Will Riker, and replacing him with his duplicate. This would have meant Data would have become the first officer in Season 6, and Riker, the operations officer. It didn’t happen, but from the point of view of the Titan crew, something like this basically DID just happen.

The Riker lean 

While talking to the Mr. Boimlers, Riker puts one foot up on a couch. Classic Riker lean. Classic. 

“Computer play Night Bird”

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Just before Boimler leaves the Ready Room, “William Boimler” and Riker are sharing some Romulan Ale. Riker says “computer, play ‘Night Bird.’” This also references “Second Chances,” in which Riker is unable to play the trombone solo for this song, which Troi teases him about endlessly. “Night Bird” also appears to be a made-up song. But who knows, maybe William Boimler will be able to master it? Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 airs on Paramount+ on Thursdays.

The post Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2, Episode 2 Easter Egg and Reference appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[thegraytalon-blog]

Nostalgia is a Hell of a Drug

Remember Chewbacca, everyone? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Stormtroopers everyone? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Darth Vader everyone? Oh I ‘ member!

Remember the Millennium Falcon everyone? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda on Nintendo? Oh I ‘member!

Remember the original Game Boy and Game Gear? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Indiana Jones? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Sonic the Hedgehog and the Sega Genesis? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Mario Kart, Starfox and Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64? Oh I ‘member!

Remember the Sinbad pirate movie that we all swear exists but in reality doesn’t? Oh I ‘member!

 Above are just a few of the many vast examples of nostalgia in the form of media and entertainment for some of us who grew up in the 80’s and the ‘90’s. Now you might be asking yourself, how can a handful of random pop culture references have anything in common? The answer lies in that they all share one crucial thing that is very similar. That being they all represent a form of nostalgia for the most of us who grew up within this era. This is the era that represented the iconic heroes, symbolic artifacts and the rise of video game dominance that we all know and love today. Even such entities that do not really exist and are part of what is called the Mandela Effect, such as that Sinbad movie from the 90’s that we all swore a blood oath existed but have no concrete evidence backing up such a claim. Well, other than the fact that Sinbad himself used to dress up like a pirate and wear some really baggy pirate looking pants in the 90’s. 

So what is it about nostalgia that is such a driving force behind what compels our minds today in such forms of life as decision making and even to the point of crucial thinking? Well, let’s start from the beginning. The majority of the memories that we have stem from early childhood and carry on over into adolescence and lessen by the time we reach and are in our full adulthood. When humans are born and are children from the age of about 3 or 4 we begin to develop our brains more and begin to retain moments that transpire in the world and capture them into an ethereal bubble and store them in our memory banks to recall at anytime we want. That is, if the memory is worth recalling at all. While most forms of nostalgia are positive some memories are not always as pleasant as that moment when you picked up a Nintendo controller for the first time to play the very first level of Super Mario Bros or when you went into that creepy cave and an old man gave a wooden sword to a child because it was too dangerous to go alone into the wilderness in The Legend of Zelda. However, they are still considered nostalgic because they caused such a tremendous impact on one’s life. 

Let’s say Timmy is 5 years old and is learning how to ride a bike without training wheels. During his trials one day he happens to lose balance, fall off and cuts his knees and sprains both ankles at the same time. Timmy then decides he will never learn how to ride a bike again. It’s not a pleasant memory, but little Timmy may carry on this memory for the rest of his life as it had a big impact on his childhood. When he is older and if people ask him if he knows how to ride a bike, he can not only say no but recall the traumatic experience that shaped his bike riding fate into the present day. Now let’s say little Timmy started riding a bike with training wheels at the age of 5 and nothing went wrong and he eventually graduated to riding a bike with two wheels like a champion. Later on during his life if the topic of riding a bike came up, Timmy may not recall the exact moment when he learned how to ride a bike or even his age, just that he knew how to ride a bike and learned when he was a child. The devil is in the details so to speak and the more prominent the events that transpire in your life, good or bad, the more you will recall and retain them and with great detail. 

Now let’s shift our focus back to the positive aspect of nostalgia and what kind of effect it has on our psyches and even physical attributes over a prolonged period of time. I will be using many examples in the form of video games and media for the rest of this entry so strap in and brace yourselves for some serious nostalgic moments! 

Petey is a pre-teen boy in the late 90’s who indulges in a plethora of video games. Sometimes on a weekend he goes over to his relative’s house to enjoy the competitive elements that gaming offers in the form of racing and shooting. He partakes in numerous races of Mario Kart 64, dogfighting matches in StarFox 64 and the tactical espionage shooting of GoldenEye 64. After hours of racing, dodging shells, popping balloons, aiming true and losing friends with that infamous blue shell in Mario Kart and shooting down enemy starships in StarFox and cursing out the kid who picked Odd Job in GoldenEye (even though we said NOBODY PICKS ODDJOB IN GOLDENEYE you cheating, miserable fucks), Petey leaves his relatives house and returns home. The next day at school Petey is in class doing his assignments when he notices out of the corner of his eye a pencil about to roll off the student’s desk that is to the left of him. Immediately Petey jerks his arm to the left and catches the pencil before it falls off and reaches the floor. Petey did not realize it, but by him dodging those shells, lasers and bullets in the games he played the day prior, it allowed him to have a slight form of heightened reflexes as his brain and body worked in unison to move his arm and catch the object before it reached the floor more so than a person who did not attune their senses by engaging in a hobby that tested your hand to eye coordination like video games do. In most video games, repetition is key. By performing various tasks over and over again, a person trains their mind and body to react in ways that are almost considered unnatural by the laws of man. Now I’m not saying that gamers are all Spider-Man or Jedi Knights, but their critical thinking does improve as well as their reflex actions and allows them to think and perform outside of the box more than others from time to time. 

Speaking of critical thinking, let’s say that it’s a bright and sunny Saturday morning in spring of 1987. You are 7 years old and wake up, have your Cookie Crisp or Fruity Pebbles while you pop on some Transformers or Thundercats as you prepare for your day off from school. Then in the early afternoon proceed to your room and take out the gilded cartridge crafted with great care by the Hylian warriors of future’s past, proceed to take a deep breath and blow deeply into the bottom of the cartridge. You then insert the cartridge into your Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and start to hear the whimsical and delightful music of The Legend of Zelda. As your adventure continues across the vast land of Hyrule, you seem to discover many dungeons along your path in which require you to solve puzzles and obtain keys to open your path to venture forward. Most of the puzzle solving includes memorizing geometrical squares or blocks to move them in such a pattern that they will allow secret passages and doors to open so you can continue your hero’s journey. After spending countless hours dungeon crawling , slaying mythical beasts, solving numerous shape shifting puzzles and obtaining the Master Sword to defeat the mighty evil lord Ganon, you put the game to rest for a little while. The next day, Sunday, you go over your friends house to hang out and he has something cool to show you. His mom bought him a new puzzle game called Simon. In this game you have to remember color patterns and memorize them to not fail and go back to the start of the puzzle. Your friend, who is not into video games as much as you, and proceeds to try out the Simon game with you. He gets a score of 4 turns without failing and you happen to score a whopping 12 turns without failing. Could it be that his memory is not as attuned as yours because you just spent the previous day playing The Legend of Zelda and solving pattern memorization puzzles in a plethora of different dungeons? It is indeed very possible and almost factual. Once again, repetition is key and it shapes the mind to retain and remember glimpses of imagery that will help you in such tasks as doing well in a memorization game or exam.  

Video games such as The Legend of Zelda are prime examples of how nostalgia not only plays a factor in critical thinking but also how our minds are shaped for when we become adults and how our way of thinking is affected by experiencing games like this in the past in our childhoods. For the most part, The Legend of Zelda series is aimed at a child base with it’s whimsical characters and environments and tunes. However, deep, beneath it’s surface, those games may contain such a deep nostalgic presence in the form of a darkened and twisted tone, that it can only be harnessed and resonated years to decades later as we reach adulthood and see how we use our intellect and minds to either provide rational thought or even something as trivial as conversing with someone and describing your likes and desires. For example, why do some of us migrate towards TV shows or comics or movies with such dark messages or that have a really sick and twisted meaning? I’ll use The Punisher and Fight Club as examples here. Could it be that our love for these 2 embodiments of physical and psychological warfare on the mind, body and spirit stem from our interaction with let’s say The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy and/or The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask for the Nintendo 64? I know I am singling our Zelda games a lot but there’s a reason and method for my madness here, I promise. You see, both of these games in particular in the series have a deeply disturbing underlying message. In Link’s Awakening you play as the famed hero Link who awakes on an island with no memory of how he got there so his goal is to find a way off the island and get back to his homeland in Hyrule. Now SPOILER ALERT because I am about to fast forward to the game’s ending. At the end of the game, Link encounters the Wind Fish, who is a mythical creature and king of the island that informs Link he is part of some kind of deep REM like fever dream that once he wakes up from all of the creatures and inhabitants of the island he is presently on will cease to exist and die pretty much. The game’s theme and message here then becomes somewhat complex. It twists the plot and forces one’s mind into a psychosis that cannot necessarily determine fiction from reality. The same is present in that of the film Fight Club. Again, SPOILER ALERT here as the entire movie we cannot tell what is fact from fiction as the main character slips in and out of a deep schizophrenic psychosis that plays the duality of himself with a character who he may or may not have created, Tyler Durden, who was everything the main character was not. Like seen in Link’s Awakening, the focus of the story is shifted from reality to fantasy in the blink of an eye where you, the player and the main character in Fight Club and Link as well are uncertain whether the world they are living in and characters around or within them are all real or simply part of some kind of imaginative force. Nobody can really pinpoint the truth of the matters, only that there may be multiple outcomes for their unique situations. 

The Punisher and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask are also similar in their own diverse ways. Now before I continue I want to go on record for saying I feel Majora’s Mask is the copyrighted and trademarked property of not only Nintendo, but Lucifer as well. That’s right folks, this game is possessed by the devil and I can prove that with hard concrete evidence. Just Google or YouTube “Ben Drowned” after finishing this and I promise you that you will not sleep well tonight after seeing that. Now for a hefty third SPOILER ALERT here as in Majora’s Mask many feel and believe that the story takes place with Link having failed in all his endeavors to stop Ganondorf from taking over the world, Princess Zelda, who he loved, was enslaved and Link himself was dead and the game takes place in the Hylian afterlife where Link has a finite amount of time to save that world from collision with a moon face who kind of looks like he is in the middle of taking the most constipated crap known to man. Now my point is here that Link is dead, he knows his world has ended as he knows it and is now just running through the motions doing what he can to survive while expelling the evil around him, doing and making whatever he can right, until death knocks on his door. The same can be said for the Punisher. The man known as Frank Castle is dead and has been since his family’s cold blooded murder, leaving behind a shell of the former man he once was and he is just simply doing what good he can, righting the wrongs of the world, while being consumed in the hell on Earth he is living in, the same as Link in Majora’s Mask, until that fateful day when the grim reaper comes beckoning. 

Therein lies our attraction to such nostalgic elements of the past to that of the present in a nutshell. But it is only a mere taste of the many nostalgic elements of the past that carry on into our present and future, forever shaping and molding both conscious and subconscious  states of our minds determining our focus and reality. 

Now in conclusion I would like to leave you all with a disturbing thought about a form nostalgia that can pander to even the most enlightened thinkers as hazardous and demeaning. How many of us grew up idolizing Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Han Solo and Princess Leia from a galaxy far, far away? How many of us used to cherish those films and even used to dress up like those characters for Halloween or even go to extreme lengths to cosplay at shows such as Comic-Con or just for fun and create videos and role play as them for blogging purposes? George Lucas created something unlike the world has ever seen and even with his infamously criticized prequels, the Star Wars franchise was still a force to be reckoned with and like the Force itself was a powerful ally of nostalgia indeed. Now fast forward a few decades to where we are now. That nostalgia of Star Wars with what once was so illustrious and fruitful has caused us to sheepishly support the ongoing cancer of the new modern world that is known quite simply as the sequel trilogy. The soulless embodiment of corruption, greed and rape of the Star Wars franchise known to man and the majority of us continue to witness the horror, which is the equivalent to watching a train wreck I guess because some of us just cannot look away. And why you may be wondering? That devil is in the details here. Nostalgia is a pathway to many abilities, like I stated earlier, and some are considered to be unnatural. The most frightening ability nostalgia gives us is the ability to go and pay hard earned dollars to experience something that is completely unworthy, unholy and just plain unnecessarily bad for our souls because nostalgia said it was a good idea! This is not only present in such forms of media as Star Wars but in other forms of entertainment as well. How many of us saw Batman VS Superman because we as teenagers or adolescents read Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and thought it would be an exact rendition of that piece of art? Who saw Man of Steel only because they saw the Nolan Brothers names in the credits and thought it would be just as good, if not, better than The Dark Knight? How many of us flocked to theaters to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull because we loved Harrison Ford in the original adventures of Indiana Jones trilogy? Give me the total number of cattle who grazed their way to the theaters to see The Hobbit after the renowned success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy? And even in video games, who ran out and bought The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask because it took place in the same world and timeline as the famed The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? The same with Nintendo and their consoles can be said. How many of you owned a Nintendo Game Boy and had to wait on line for 3 hours to obtain a Nintendo Virtual Boy due to the nostalgia caused by the Game Boy? On the other side of the fence, how many countless people purchased Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360 because of their fond recollections of Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast? The list goes on and on and on. 

All of these newly released end resulted products listed above have ended in disappointment over their predecessors in some way, shape or form. These letdowns that I just stated cannot hold a candle to their nostalgic ancestral entities  of the past that brought us such warmth and joy. Simply stated, they just do not make them like they used to! So why do we continue to follow this systematic pattern? Does nostalgia alone drive our state of mind or is it something deeper and something even more psychological? I feel that there is another driving force that goes hand in hand in tandem with the nostalgia factor. I strongly believe that married to nostalgia is F.O.M.O. or the “Fear of Missing Out”, which is a syndrome created by chemicals in the brain that develop such an emotional fear that if they were ever to stop witnessing a piece of intellectual property they have invested so much time and energy into that they became terrified as to what the outcome may be, even if there would be no harm done to them physically. Emotionally speaking, these people are frightened to the point of stasis that if they were to miss out on viewing or playing or experiencing something they have dumped a large chunk of their lives to, their minds may collapse into themselves like a neutron star! It fascinates the very mind and can even warrant further study to what drives an individual to such lengths of commitment, with nostalgic fear being one of the leading factors and causes. A prime example of this would be the television show The Walking Dead, based on Robert Kirkman’s comic series. The show has been renewed for it’s 11th season and has long since lost my interest so I simply stopped watching. But I know people who continue watching even though the show has turned stale. Why? F.O.M.O! Godforbid they miss out on a morsel and crumb of walking down a barren road! And what about the next Star Wars movie? Episode IX is due out in December of 2019 and the majority of people I know are committed to seeing it even after they claimed Episode VIII ruined the franchise for them. Why? F.O.M.O!

  I will leave you all with this final thought to ponder: If one is to break away from the sheepish herd, they must first act and lead like a member of the wolf pack.

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

An Interview with Dan Bejar — 2004

Sunday interview! I remember feeling nervous about this one -- there weren’t a whole lot of interviews with him at the time and Bejar seemed kinda mysterious! But he was very friendly and receptive ... I still think Your Blues is one of the best Destroyer records. So there! 

Under the ominous moniker Destroyer, Dan Bejar has released some of the most adventurous and iconoclastic indie rock of the past few years. Never content to settle on one particular sound (or backing band), Bejar's already impressive body of work displays an artist with a gift for infectious melodies, a unique lyrical voice, and a fearlessly experimental streak. Your Blues, the latest Destroyer release, sees Bejar flinging himself wholly into the alien world of Roland synthesizers, MIDI guitars, and highly orchestral song forms. It's almost the polar opposite of his previous record, the sprawling, messily brilliant This Night. But once the shock of this jarring sonic shift wears off, Your Blues reveals itself to be another idiosyncratic masterpiece. On the eve of a rare North American tour, Bejar talked about the genesis of the new album, among other topics.

I understand you just played SXSW? How'd that go?

Well, it was with the incarnation with the band that's playing songs off of Your Blues, which is basically this band Frog Eyes who have learned the songs. It was our second show ever, so keeping that in mind I thought it was really good. I just started practicing these songs in the last couple months, and we've got a little ways to go, a couple more songs to learn. We did one show in Vancouver just before we played SXSW.

So are there challenges in presenting these new songs in a live setting? The album certainly isn't a "rock band" type of record.

There's no challenge, because the idea of trying to replicate or even approximate what's on the record was the first thing that we threw out the window. I mean, on some songs the vocal melody is the same, the lyrics are the same, the chords generally stay the same, but they bear no resemblance whatsoever to what you might hear on the record. For the most part, it's a full-on rock band. I'm in the middle of it right now, so I feel like I can't quite describe what exactly is happening to the songs. And also, it's really being shaped by Carey [Mercer], who is the main guy in Frog Eyes.

How'd you hook up with Frog Eyes?

A few years back, the New Pornographers played a show in Victoria and [Mercer's] band at the time, Blue Pine opened up. I met him briefly then, and heard his record and was a big fan of it. Then he started this new band Frog Eyes, and when I moved back to Vancouver I went to go see them play. We corresponded a bit, and when it came time to figure out how to tour the record, Nic [Bragg], who played a real integral part of the This Night experience, had the crazy idea that using Frog Eyes might be an interesting way to decimate the songs in a cool manner. And he ended up being right.

I'd like to talk a bit about the new record. Obviously, the production and execution of Your Blues is radically different from This Night. Did you go into recording this new one thinking you wanted to do something completely different?

You know, it was an idea I had even when we were making This Night. I don't think it was purely reactionary to the last record. I liked the idea of actually sitting down and composing something. But the idea I had is actually a fair bit different than what came out. I wanted it to be along the lines of a weird, crooning record. Lots of orchestrations, though I had a feeling I'd have to go down the MIDI road, because I knew I wouldn't be preparing charts for an orchestra or anything like that. So yeah, the idea was growing for a while. That being said, I don't think it's something I'll ever do again. I'm pretty sure of that actually.

Was it a pleasurable experience to make it? I know you've worked in more "band" settings in the past.

Yeah, it was fun. And in some ways, it was kind of leisurely. In other ways, it was nerve-wracking. But the set up was pretty easy. You just pick up your MIDI guitar and plug it into the computer and you do your metal riffs and you punch in the 101 strings setting and there you go. But at the same time, I was questioning from beginning to end whether the whole thing was completely misguided. Like, was there some sort of strange death wish I had in making the record? And I still listen to it with a certain amount of trepidation. I think it came out way more palatable than I first thought it would be.

Did you know you could get a good sound out of all of these synthesizers? Or was it more of an experimental thing?

With the MIDI technology we were using, we really didn't want to court some kind of eighties nostalgia. We got the highest end sound module we could find. Hopefully the one that ["Late Show with David Letterman" band leader] Paul Schaffer uses or something like that. And I really did want to approximate the sound of strings, or the sound of a woodwind section as much as I could. And with the synth settings, I was thinking more along the lines of new age settings more the New Wave settings. But also, my ears are worse than most people's, so you could probably play me a fairly chintzy violin sample and I'd be like "Oh man, that sounds so great!" Meanwhile everyone else would just be rolling their eyes. Having heard the record a few times, I can see where people are hearing synths where I'm hearing strings. Maybe that kind of backfired a bit. But I always knew that would probably be the case, and I wasn't too concerned with it.

Are there any sonic touchstones for Your Blues? Any records that you used as reference points?

I've always been a big Scott Walker fan. And I've listened to certain Richard Harris records that Jimmy Webb did.

Are those spoken word records?

No… well, the way he sings, it could be debated [laughs]. He did try his hardest to infuse some sort of drunken melody into the thing. And I would listen to somebody like John Cale, who I've always really liked. Just the way he used classical instruments. He always ends up being a specter on whatever record I do.

Is there any reason you're drawn to his stuff?

I just really like his solo records. There's kind of like a marriage of this old world austerity with this unavoidable pop sensibility. I can't seem to shake that.

That makes sense actually. I hadn't thought of it before, but his early eighties stuff like Music For A New Society is kind of similar in tone to Your Blues.

Exactly. When I had the idea for the record I pictured it being way more desolate and kind of barren and brutal. But the songs that I brought to the table, for the most part, were just too busy. Too many major chords. Too wordy. So things changed.

Is that the case with most Destroyer records? Do you have ideas for them that change through out the recording process?

For the Thief and Streethawk records, we were essentially trying to put forth what the band ideally would sound like if we just walked into a room and played the songs. And that was always a bit of sleight of hand, because we were always a messed-up lineup. But [producer] John [Collin]'s pretty good at creating those kinds of illusions.

And with This Night, I just wanted to make a sprawling, fucked-up record. And that was easy - I just practiced with some people who I knew would be really good at that kind of thing. And we just totally messed up the songs and didn't practice much. I went in the studio and just threw stuff at them. Those records actually ended up pretty close to the way the initial idea of them was. While this one, because it had a definite conceptual basis, changed a bit. And also, I had no idea what it would be – I'd throw around the word "MIDI" and I just didn't know how it would work or what it would sound like. And John and Dave [Carswell], who were pretty integral in shaping the record, they'd never done anything like this either. I walked into the studio with the chords and the vocal melodies and the lyrics. The rest was just us sitting down and saying "Oh, well how about this here," and John coming in at the end of the day to edit it to make it sound… not completely embarrassing. Once in a while he'd have to say, "You know, maybe MIDI congas aren't a good idea." [Laughs]

So it wasn't a free for all. But I think it definitely came out sounding a lot more melodious than we were originally thinking. And that has a lot to do with Dave as well. Once you get him on a guitar -- even if it is a MIDI guitar – he's gonna come up with catchy parts.

You mentioned the "sonic" concept of the record, but I was wondering if you'd dare call Your Blues a "concept" record? I mean, is there a narrative going on in the lyrics?

No. Lyrically I've never approached having a concept. A theme, maybe in some ways. I've kind of dabbled and waltzed in and out of this idea of a record that addressed, I don't know what, some kind of abstract bankruptcy in underground music and culture [laughs]. But I wanted to get away from that as soon as I did it. But any conceptual basis for Your Blues is purely a musical idea.

I guess the reason I ask is that a lot of the tracks have this theatrical, dramatic feel to them. I can almost see them being sung on stage.

That's funny. I'm always hesitant to mention this, but a lot of the songs on Your Blues are to be used in a play.

No kidding! But that came after the fact?

No, that came before the fact. But I have a) no ability and b) no interest in writing narrative songs. So it wasn't like I sat down to write a libretto or something like that. It was more like, here's a bunch of songs, and maybe you can use them to color the play somehow and see if somehow a Destroyer song would make sense with someone other than me singing it. And also I was pretty adamant that I had this idea for making this record that some people might mistake as like "The Sound of Music" [laughs], and that in no way would that be the way I would envision the songs being played onstage. The songs that do get used will hopefully be really stripped down and just will shine some different light on the songs.

But anyway, I think there's always been a certain amount of theatricality, if that's the word you want to use, to Destroyer songs going way back. And the songs on Your Blues, if I look at them, don't seem that atypical from the rest of the stuff I've written.

Your lyrics have always been really strong and distinctive. Are there lyricists you admire?

Yeah, of course. Somewhere in the heart of me there lurks an indie fan boy, I think. There's always a couple songs off of a Smog record that I'll hear, I'll just shake my head and walk away from it. Just like, "This fucking guy." And then I'll wonder if you can really approach writing [those sorts of lyrics] without being some kind of sociopath. And there's stuff that I really love that most people don't associate being really lyrically based music. Like the Plush records or the Neil Hagerty records. There hasn't been anything in recent years that's really leapt out at me. Frog Eyes I think are really awesome. I like the Cass McCombs record, I think that's really good.

Do you consider your songs autobiographical, or confessional in any way?

I would never write something down just to confess it. Usually it's a pretty conscious effort to create something of aesthetic value. You know what I mean? I mean, my approach to language is not super conscious in that I sit down and have some over-arching idea that the language has to fit into. It's actually really instinctual. But the aesthetic is one of using language that just works. You write it down, and somehow it's just working for you. It's not what the words mean, but what they do, I guess. How the phrasing interacts with melody, and how meaning can change once you throw that in there. That being said, you could probably comb through my lyrics and find a handful of threads that would piece it all together.

One thing I think that makes your lyrics stand out is that often they're really funny. Not in a novelty sense, but more like Bob Dylan can be really funny.

Yeah! That's cool that you think that. No one has ever said that to me. That's really good. It's not something I'm striving for, but there will be times when I look at something [that I've written] and -- I won't laugh at loud -- but I think it's just… yeah, I'll use the word "funny." In the same way that like Leonard Cohen can be funny. And Dylan can be really funny. I think that any writing I really like walks the line between severity and playfulness.

[fancypantshoodlum]

ALBUM REVIEW: HAIM ‘Something To Tell You’

The wait is over! HAIM's second album is here, but it's not like they've been completely off the radar. 

There was that collab single with Bastille which was fun, 'Pray To God' with Calvin Harris - a leftover from the 'Days Are Gone' sessions that I'm hoping the original pops up on an anniversary reissue in, gosh, 2023, 'Holes In The Sky' from the soundtrack of the 2nd Divergent movie that I wasn't feeling at all, and their cover of Tame Impala's ‘Cause I'm a Man' which is BETTER than the original (sorry Kevin).

While all this was happening, they were making an indelible but overlooked mark on the pop and cultural landscape - which I’ll elaborate on in seven topics

 TRENDSETTING

I started hearing their inventive brand of polyrhythmic synth guitar pop crop up in tunes like Shura's 'Touch' (lowkey soulful icy synth HAIM), 'Emotion' by Carly Rae Jepson (Latin Freestyle HAIM) and most recently Paramore's 'Told You So' and 'Forgiveness' (all of the above).

Just like The Strokes East Village thrift was hugely influential back in the day on Mens fashion (what Spin magazine hilariously described as “part Bowery Boys, part CK One hotties”) 

HAIM definitely popularized a uber long hair, leather jacket and cropped shorts LA boho look that was practically everywhere in 2014/5 (or maybe just in the hipster places I hang :P )

There is an actual website called What Would HAIM Wear?

 DAYS ARE GONE MARK II

Now here we are with 'Something To Tell You' - not a repudiation but builds on 'Days Are Gone' - a sequel and clear step forward that's more confident and audacious in its approach and teeming with new musical ideas and different sonic textures.

While still largely stuck to love songs, the lyrics represent a quantum leap in terms of thoughtfulness and maturity.

 THE INTERPRETATION GAME

 The first glimpse of this record we got was 'Right Now' which came in the form of a video filmed as they recorded a take - giving an instant impression of muso credibility. a down tempo, foreboding ballad, not really a summer jam but hot on it's heels came 'Want You Back' the euphoric banger if there ever was one.

Lyrically they could be two sides of one story, 'Right Now' a tempestuous rebuke against an dishonest ex whose come crawling back.  Like an argument that evolves into a full on row , the song builds and builds with each incrimination like thunder, a guitar squalls, Taiko drum patterns rumble - and then it all explodes. 'Want You Back' the ex, having gone back into the dating world, realises that they miss the narrator, apologises '' I’ll take the fall and the fault in us. I’ll give you all the love I never gave before I left you''.

'Want You Back' has the wistful wisdom of a folk song which makes complete sense when you learn that it was originally written as a much slower song on an acoustic guitar. I remember John Lennon saying on The Beatles Anthology Documentary (or it could've been from Ian MacDonald's Beatles book 'Revolution In The Head') that whatever instrument a song is written on influences the flavour of the song, and its defo left its mark.

I really love 'Night So Long' though. The desolate blend of echoic harmony, ambient guitar twang & weeping melodies gives it a real nocturnal, countrified, dark night of the soul vibe to it. a lovelorn hymn that's really evocative of post break up, being lost in quiet despair, resigned to another crack around the merry-go-round of Love - for the narrator Romantic Love is a Sisyphean act

I could get really SAT English Literature with my interpretations of these songs but I'll spare you the pain lol

 STUDIO AS AN INSTRUMENT

One of the common critics of HAIM albums, especially this sophomore release is that it's over produced. To be honest it's no more heavily produced than a classic Neptunes track or Timbaland one a decade before and Trevor Horn back in the 80s.

The Daddy of them all being Phil Spector whose Wall of Sound approach was a dense aesthetic that included an array of orchestral instruments—strings, woodwind, brass and percussion—not previously associated with pop music, characterizing his methods as "a Wagnerian approach to rock & roll: little symphonies for the kids".  

Brian Wilson, a huge Spector fan, used a similar recording technique, especially during the Pet Sounds and Smile eras of the Beach Boys, the most recognizable examples being "God Only Knows", "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and especially, the psychedelic "pocket symphony" of "Good Vibrations"

Wilson says "Before Spector, people recorded all the instruments separately. They got great piano, great guitar, and great bass. But he thought of the song as one giant instrument. It was huge. Size was so important to him, how big everything sounded. And he had the best drums I ever heard."

‘Something To Tell You’ (and ‘Days are Gone’ too) is very much in the spirit of Spector but with a modern vernacular. ‘Ready For You’, ‘Want You Back’ and the title song are really sonically dense and defly work in a lot of elements.

The dichotomy of the synthetic, adventurous interpretation of the songs on the record compared to the more reigned in, organic live version isn’t unique to HAIM.

Led Zeppelin live were, as legendary rock critic Lester Bangs described them, 'a thunderous, near-undifferentiated tidal wave of sound that doesn't engross but envelops to snuff any possible distraction' or in Robert Plant's words it was a "very animal thing, a hellishly powerful thing,". In contrast Page's production on the records gave their songs a sense of auditory cinema to what could have been, in a less-imaginative producer’s hands, simply bombastic rock songs.

There’s all sorts of panning and added the effects, echo-chambered voice drops into a small explosion of fuzz-tone guitar, including using Low Frequency Oscillators on tape machines that was really startling to hear at the time.

I had qualms about the use of pitched vocals that are at the start of ‘Little of Your Love’ and in the call back in the chorus of ‘Right Now’, because in the latter I thought it undercut the poignancy by having something so alien sounding in something so human, and the prior I thought a synthetic touch in something so throwback was jarring – like T Pain at the start of Springsteen’s ‘Hungry Heart’ – but maybe not a teenager who hasn’t grown up with sounds being rigidly compartmentalized in genres the way people did in the 20th century.

SIDE NOTE: In fact it could be argued that auto tune / vocal pitch shifting (techniques for deliberate misusing of programs designed for correcting pitch as a way of colourizing the human voice with distortion) is the musical signature of the 2010’s the same way a Wah-Wah pedal makes you think of the 60s or the sound of a Fairlight CMI is very 80s. Which if true makes Cher’s ‘Believe’ ridiculously ahead of it’s time – the pop equivalent of what The MC5 were to Punk?

 SPOT THE INFLUENCES

 Critics love to play ‘Spot the Influences’:  X sounds as if The Reminder-era Feist fused together the acoustic riffs of ‘I Don't Want to Know’ and ‘Never Going Back Again’ – it weirdly reminds me of families gathered around a new-born baby talking about how it has it’s mother’s eyes but grandfathers nose – all these are just cosmetic judgements that are useful to introduce the uninitiated to artists they’ve never heard about but music, like babies, are more than the sum of their parts.  

When critics would name check Fleetwood Mac in reference to HAIM in 2013 it always felt tenuous though I knew what they meant – the songs didn’t sound like Fleetwood Mac in the autonomy of the song structure but in the emotional resonance. People hadn’t heard a guitar pop band sing about relationships like that, in a style like that for a long time – since probably Fleetwood Mac and so made the connection – but the fab ‘You Never Knew’ completely pastiches the gossamer textures of Tango In The Night era Fleetwood Mac in its production to its detriment I think because every time it starts I’m half expecting Christine McVie to come on and tell me sweet little lies.

 NO GENRES

I once stumbled on a useful insight about art criticism from an article that the writer and journalist Janet Malcolm wrote in response to vitriolic critiques on J.D Salinger's writing made by literary luminaries such as Updike and Didion: ''negative contemporary criticism of a masterpiece can be helpful to later critics, acting as a kind of radar that picks up the ping of the work’s originality''.

Now, I’m not saying this record is a masterpiece - It's really good - but unpacking and investigating the critiques have lead me to some interesting places, like this douchey one from the Guardian.

‘’…Haim were swiftly co-opted by the world of mainstream pop, which seems less interested in their place within a lineage of classic Californian rock than their way with a honeyed melody.’’

 From the off this is not true because they did tour with Florence and The Machine and play the big pop extravaganza that was Chime For Change before they even dropped an album. This smells more like a Luddite Gen Xer hang up about transgressing the dividing lines between musical genres.

Music critic Lizzy Goodman on the promo trail for her excellent book ‘Meet Me In The Bathroom’ a thrilling 600-page oral history of New York’s Rock renaissance of the 2000s  - brought up a fantastic point on a podcast about the analogue kids of The Strokes generation and their Post Napster successors Vampire Weekend, Grimes and HAIM etc.

Listen to that podcast here (it’s brilliant)

https://soundcloud.com/the-watch-podcast/lizzy-goodman-on-the-rebirth-of-rock-n-roll-in-new-york-city-from-2001-to-2011-ep-153

 but here’s the paraphrased version of what I want to highlight:

 Interviewer: The time between ‘Is This It?’ and Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut is 7 years – one was the beginning of something and one was the end of something.

LIZZY GOODMAN: You could imagine The Strokes debuting in 2008 but you could not imagine Vampire Weekend happening in 2001 because there is no Ezra brain without the internet.

Interviewer: When I interviewed Ezra for Spin, I became the most oldest man in the universe! I was so angry, I was like: ‘’how dare you go to an Ivy League school, be white and like Hip Hop’’ says the guy who went to an Ivy League school, was white and loved Hip Hop, but how dare you talk about it (so well) and have fluency in all these different worlds and jump between things and never break a sweat.

LG: He’s literally like ‘I don’t know what you mean?’

This is normal to a Millennial but to a Gen Xer that level of musical sophistication is unheard of because they didn’t have the access to everything ever recorded pooled together in one space that the internet is. This Age of Musical Plenty has freed people up from the rigid lock of genre and toward an eclectic palette which is also reflected in the music they make.

  BAND BY IT'S COVER

I LOVE ALBUM ART! (I'm also a keen linear notes reader *did you know there's a Grammy for best linear notes? musicians take note lol*) when done right they're great windows into the tone of the record inside. 'Days Are Gone' & 'Something To Tell You' are really cool to contrast.

'Days Are Gone' was the start of a huge career for the band. The album offered listeners a look into their sunny, romantic lives and the cover art too reflected HAIM's bright prospects. Seated in three fold-up chairs on a big green lawn (suburban kids) the heads of the HAIM sisters are turned to the left, eyes averted and covered in shades (future's so bright, I gotta wear shades)

They followed the Spice Girls’ template of being a charismatic group, whose individual styles all added to the bigger picture - their meshing of high street and storied, thrift store pieces gave them an indie rock relatability. They looked like regular joes with great personal style.

On the flip-side 'Something To Tell You' is the glam fulfillment of that promise. It's like a souped up version where the pastoral suburban LA setting of 'Days Are Gone' gives way to more traditional iconic rock images of LA interspersed with glam fashion editorial-like images and (my fav) the quirkier bold coloured zoot suit-y David Byrne-esque stuff.

  'Something To Tell You' is a clear step forward, artistically and career-wise. You can hear adventurous enthusiasm in how they approach every song and from the lyrics you get that too that the uncertainty that was a motif in a lot of the songs from their last LP is gone and not only do they finally know what they want from life but are racing towards it. Record #3 is going to be an exciting listen.

[projectalbum]

R U Talkin’ I.R.S. R.E.M. RE: ME? 183. “Murmur - Deluxe Edition,” 184. “Reckoning,” 185. “Fables of the Reconstruction,” 186. “Lifes Rich Pageant,” 187. “Dead Letter Office," 188. “Document” by R.E.M.

If you’ve been following this blog with any regularity, you may have noticed how often references to R.E.M. weave their way into my appraisals of other artists. That’s because the band has become a bit of a Rosetta Stone for my musical taste: eclectic, ever-evolving, beautifully melodic, with evocative (or downright inscrutable) lyrics. I delved into their decades-long catalogue- piecemeal and out of chronology in the pre-Spotify days- at the exact point in my adolescence when I was forming what that taste would be. And now I must ask the question that has so ignited the public's curiosity: When did I first hear of the band R.E.M.?

My answer, at long last, is… "Hmm, not sure." As recounted in my entry on Barenaked Ladies (or “BNL,” as befitting such an essential band): during a high school trip through Europe, a bus ride from Ireland to Wales was scored by an all-over-the-map mixtape.* I was definitely already familiar with “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” when it popped up. And I remember, sitting there as misty green hills moved past the window, that it sparked a web of associations: I likely thought of “Losing My Religion,” probably “The One I Love.” After watching a Comedy Central documentary on Andy Kaufman, I became briefly obsessed, and my mom helpfully told me that there was a song written about him, titled “Man on the Moon.” She pulled Automatic for the People, the only R.E.M. release she owned, off the shelf and played that track for me. I think I liked it, but I didn’t go further than that.

So, sitting on that tour bus, I figured that when we reached the London leg of our whirlwind trip, I would use my personal pilgrimage to Virgin Megastore (remember those?) to pick up a greatest hits collection. And I did, getting the recently released In Time: The Best of R.E.M. I loved it so much, I barely noticed that half the songs I knew, including the one that had inspired the purchase, were nowhere to be found.

As I later learned, that compilation was put out by Warner Bros Records, and as such was solely focused on the songs the band recorded while under contract to that label. And it’s true, several of their biggest hits came out of those first few WB releases. But wither “The One I Love?” Well, before they signed that lucrative deal, R.E.M. made their bones putting out arty, jangly, pastorally pretty rock music under the banner of I.R.S. Records.  

It’s been awhile since I first heard their debut full-length Murmur (#183), but after the slicker, weirder, string-flavored tunes I was used to, hearing the upfront immediacy of the young-and-hungry band, playing as a tight group over a chasm of reverb, was a bit revelatory. Recorded at the now-defunct Reflection Sound Studios in Charlotte, NC (a liner note discovery that filled me with no small amount of regional pride), Don Dixon and Mitch Easter's production makes the jangle rock dreamy and beguiling while avoiding cheesy 80’s pitfalls. It’s all killer, no filler (I even love “We Walk,” all bouncy repetition and ever-climbing arpeggios)— right now, I’d say the earnest “Talk About The Passion” and the almost hiccupy hook of “Catapult” rank as my favorite moments, but that changes and shifts unpredictably.

The sonic muscle of Reckoning (#184) is cleaner, with opener “Harborcoat” immediately shaking loose the spooky cobwebs of Murmur. Again, the immediacy surprised me when I first heard it: I was hearing the version of the band that tore the roof off of tiny venues in sleepy college towns throughout the South. For a time, it was the comparative lack of the fussy arrangements and earnest, soaring melodies I’d come to expect from my R.E.M. that dismissed this album to a dusty gray corner in my mind. But the mark of a Favorite Band means that you can return to their work at different times in your life and find that while the music stayed the same, you’re hearing it with different ears. There’s not a weak link in 10 tracks, and songs that I’d once had trouble even recalling became new favorites: "So. Central Rain,” with its ringing Rickenbacker guitar line, melodic bass, and keening chorus (“I’m sorry”) is a fan favorite for a reason, and “Camera,” which recalls a departed friend of the band’s, builds to a shattering chorus. And of course, the one straight-up, tear-in-your-beer country rocker in their catalogue, “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville."

I remember driving to night classes in my first year of community college, listening to my newly-purchased disc of Fables of the Reconstruction (#185). Now this was immediately my speed, with the spooky, menacing, string quartet-inflected “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” and incantatory “Maps and Legends" leading the pack. The band had a lousy experience recording it, and they badmouth the way the songs were mixed, but to me the thick-as-kudzu production is a big part of this album’s hallucinatory power. I love the surreal, umber and burnished gold and chartreuse cover art as well: though the layout looks a little too cluttered on the CD, I bought the vinyl record from a second-hand store just to frame it, with the “Reconstruction of the Fables” ear-box side facing out from my wall.

Not every track does it for me. “Can’t Get There from Here” is fun but a little too affected in its whimsy, and “Auctioneer (Another Engine),” already a bit monotone, is the track most hampered by sludgy sound. But sandwiched in-between are “Green Grow the Rushes” and “Kohoutek,” glimpses of the environmentally-conscious, culturally-sensitive side of Michael Stripe and Co that led directly into their follow-up, Lifes Rich Pageant (#186). They expand the promise of those two tracks with “Fall On Me” and “Cuyahoga,” to devastatingly pretty effect.

Where Fables was a nighttime drive down an inky-dark American highway, Pageant is a wide-eyed survey of virgin prairie, a longing to return to unspoiled harmonic existence. “Let’s put our heads together / Let’s start a new country up,” the natives of “Cuyahoga” resolve over the ashy remains of the river bend. "What you want and what you need, there's the key / Your adventure for today, what do you do / Between the horns of the day?” Stipe exhorts his listeners in “I Believe,” and the Southern beach rock behind the words pushes you to make your move. “We are young despite the years / We are concern / We are hope despite the times,” he belts out over furious riffs and annihilated drums in “These Days," Mike Mills calling out affirmation in his backup vocal.

Right down to the absurdist sea shanty “Swan Swan H” and infectiously fun cover “Superman” that close it out, it’s hard to find a more consistent document of the band’s strengths. And now, damn, I want that to be a crackerjack segue to discussion of their next studio album, but months before that final I.R.S. release, there was Dead Letter Office (#187). A collection of occasionally rather sloppy outtakes and covers of varying reverence, the main draw here is the inclusion of their debut EP Chronic Town (on the CD, anyway. I notice that Spotify separates those songs from the DLO tracks). The angular menace of “Wolves, Lower” and the subtle, melodic magic of “Gardening At Night” (Stripe’s almost unintelligible lyrics are Exhibit A for his early-years shyness) are justifiable fan favorites to this day— not bad for the first batch of songs from such a prolific group. A must.

Buying Document (#188) finally gave me easy access to “It’s The End of the World...” and “The One I Love” (rather than, you know, waiting to hear one or the other on the radio). It also meant first experiencing one of my favorite opening salvos on record: “Finest Worksong.” It sounds HUGE, to borrow an oft-accurate phrase from notable actor/R.E.M. podcaster Adam Scott. Bill Berry’s thundercrack drums echo as if recorded in a cavernous factory where the overlords have been overthrown, while Peter Buck’s guitar chugs and drones, a dramatic change from the nimble arpeggios that made up previous records. It, and the songs that follow— “Welcome to the Occupation” ("Listen to the buyer still / Listen to the Congress / Where we propagate confusion”), “Exhuming McCarthy” ("Vested interest, united ties / Landed gentry, rationalize / Look who bought the myth / By Jingo, buy America”), “Disturbance at the Heron House”— make the album, at 31 years old, feel like a queasy reflection of our current milieu. No one feels fine right now.

Luckily, the music is still driving, fun, singable, varied in its grooves and moods. “Fireplace,” coming right after the twofer of the most famous singles, provided me such an unexpected thrill with a rare appearance by sinuous be-bop saxophone, such a different color for this band. Sax in 80’s songs is usually an utterly cheeseball affair, but this is a dark, weird tune, and is nowhere near that register of power balladry. “Lightnin’ Hopkins” is just as unique, with a metalhead rolling drum beat and Stipe acting like a throat-shredded street preacher over echoey chain-gang backup howls.

This band takes up a whole shelf in my house, so hold on tight for several more comprehensive and encyclopedic write-ups. 

*It’s been over a year since I wrote that entry, and I recently realized my memory is jumbled up. I now have a clear recollection that the songs from BNL’s Everything For Everyone were repeating in my head ON THAT VERY TRIP! So I was already a fan.

[ricardosousalemos]

Weezer: Weezer (Blue Album)

Weezer mastermind Rivers Cuomo was such a somber kid that his second-grade teacher trained the other students to tell him, in unison, “Let me see the smile.” Childhood in Yogaville, the ashram and Integral Yoga HQ led by “Woodstock guru” Swami Satchidananda in eastern Connecticut, was isolating, devoid of much pop culture and adventure—until Cuomo heard Kiss. When a family friend brought their fifth album, 1976’s Rock and Roll Over, to the Cuomo house, it sent Rivers and younger brother Leaves launching off furniture in a way only formative music can. “I’ve pretty much based my life around that record,” he has said. With their comic-book personas and distorted riffs, Kiss cracked Cuomo’s young brain wide open and rewired it for good. He had little idea what debauchery they were singing of, but from that point on, Cuomo began having intense dreams about becoming a rock star, and he began obsessively studying the work of his songwriting heroes.

For Rivers, music offered both a coat of armor and an identity. As a pre-teen enrolled in public school for the first time, Cuomo went by a different first name and his stepfather’s last name (Kitts); his chosen moniker—Peter Kitts—was awfully close to that of Kiss drummer Peter Criss. And while Cuomo was still picked on as he made his way through puberty, he eventually found his people: the metalheads. In 1989, Cuomo moved from Connecticut with his high school band to Los Angeles, ground zero for the AquaNetted and Spandexed. There, he found himself in the midst of shifting tastes, both culturally and personally. He started working at the Sunset Boulevard Tower Records, where he was schooled on quintessentially “cool” music like the Velvet Underground, Pixies, and Sonic Youth.

Also in the mix at this time was a new band called Nirvana. When Cuomo first heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the radio in late 1991 while washing dishes in an Italian restaurant, he was sorta pissed he didn’t write it himself. “Rivers says, ‘I should have written that,’” remembered early Weezer guitarist Jason Cropper in John D. Luerssen’s band biography, River’s Edge. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah. That’s totally true.’ Because the music he was writing was improving in quality every day.” Cuomo’s interest in Nirvana became an obsession. He’d taken notes from Brian Wilson, the Beatles, Scorpions, Yngwie Malmsteen, and, of course, Kiss. But for all his knowledge of rock history, he still cared deeply about writing anthems that spoke to his generation, even if he had trouble looking his peers in the eyes.

Weezer anthems were destined to be different. In 1994, the acts dominating the modern rock charts were pushing against something, from the British aesthetes (Depeche Mode, New Order, Morrissey) to the singular weirdos (Beck, Tori Amos, Red Hot Chili Peppers) to the disenfranchised youth (Nirvana, Green Day, Pearl Jam). With rebellion came a facade of cool, and that was something Weezer could never manage, at least not in the traditional way. Cuomo always tried a little too hard. He would become the fidgety anti-frontman with a thousand “revenge of the nerds” taglines and a Harvard degree to prove it. That dichotomy—the big-time rockstar in khakis and Buddy Holly glasses, who never seems totally comfortable in his own skin—is what launched his cult and anchored his unlikely sex appeal. And his band—drummer Patrick Wilson, bassist Matt Sharp, and guitarist Brian Bell—played along, accentuating their innate geekiness to make Weezer feel like a unified front. 

By the summer of 1993, Cuomo had written a number of songs strong enough to convince the alt-rock major DGC to sign Weezer (this despite a lack of buzz around the L.A. scene) and have the Cars’ frontman Ric Ocasek produce their first album. When the group’s self-titled debut—typically known as The Blue Album—arrived in May 1994, Cobain had been dead for a month. A feeling of dread hung over the alternative rock world whose prominence was ushered in by the Seattle sound. With their wired energy, effortless power-pop-punk hooks, and Beach Boys harmonies, Weezer took the alt-rock explosion in a new direction. You couldn’t quite tell if Cuomo was mocking his song’s regressive narrators or sympathizing with them. But once you got past his defense mechanisms and sorting through the humor and cultural references, you found a portrait of a young man’s psyche, riddled with angst and insecurity. And it arrived on the wings of massive riffs and gnarled guitar solos that sounded like they were emanating from a Flying V—on every single song. 

The Blue Album’s exploration of the fragile male ego is in full swing by the record’s second track, “No One Else.” Taken at face value, this is likely the most misogynistic song Weezer has ever released. “I want a girl who will laugh for no one else,” Cuomo sings while the band rushes through the fuzzy pop-punk changes, evoking the hyperbole of masculinity. But there’s more beneath the surface. “‘No One Else’ is about the jealous-obsessive asshole in me freaking out on my girlfriend," Cuomo has said. The song acquires even more resonance in the context of its sequencing on the record. Cuomo described the following song, “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here,” as “the same asshole wondering why she's gone.” In actuality, he spends most of “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” muttering to his ex’s wallet photograph and masturbating to her memory, getting in a joke along the way, saying she enjoyed the sex “more than ever.” It’s an absurd scene, but imagine the sentiment coming from the wrong person and it’s suddenly not so funny. Weezer were masterful at walking this line between knowing jokiness and legitimately creepy dysfunction.

This base kind of arrested development shifts back and forth between the narrator’s relationship with girls and his views on himself. If “No One Else” and “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” are mirror twins, so are “Surf Wax America” and “In the Garage.” Given that Weezer were named after a common term for asthma sufferers, no one expected them to be out on a board riding the waves. That tension animates “Surf Wax America,” a well-crafted jumble of harmonic puzzles and barreling punk guitars where the hedonistic surfer lifestyle is both celebrated and chided for its simplistic worldview. Even while the song sneers, the ferocity of Cuomo screaming “Let’s go!” juxtaposed with the solemnness of the band’s Wilsonian harmonies make you believe, once again, in Weezer’s sincerity. Meanwhile, “In the Garage” is an homage to that happy place where no one judges you for your comic books, D&D figurines, and Kiss posters. It seems like over-the-top self-parody, but the garage was indeed a real place where early Weezer practiced and recorded when Cuomo, Sharp, and original guitarist Justin Fisher lived together in the “Amherst House” near Santa Monica. The hopeless ambition of “In the Garage” would make it the defining song of nerd-rock.

In between “Surf Wax America,” a fantasy about someone completely different, and “In the Garage,” a hyper-detailed song about himself, lies a song about his father. There are two more nakedly emotional songs on Blue, which are set off further by Cuomo’s rare embrace of laid-back guitars. Atop a bluesy jangle, “Say It Ain’t So” details the moment when Cuomo’s deepest worries are realized: He sees a beer in the fridge and, remembering how his father drank before he walked out, he senses his stepfather is doing the same. He fears now that he, too, is destined for this fate. Pinkerton, Weezer’s sophomore album, is often described as the tortured confessional to end all tortured confessionals, essentially a diary of Cuomo’s notorious Asian fetish. But “Say It Ain’t So” is just as raw, and arguably has more that its listeners can use, throwing its arms wide open to anyone who’s known the trauma of dad issues. The music is constructed perfectly, building and building until what's left of Cuomo's vulnerability comes out as a bitterly frayed "yeah-yeah," all capped by a guitar solo worthy of the Scorpions.

The desire to write a perfect song can drive some songwriters mad, as their belief in music as a vehicle for emotional expression reconciles itself with the belief that pop is a puzzle that can be solved. On Blue, Cuomo found the ideal balance, as he rarely has since. He understood the rules so well that he also knew when to break them, from Sharp’s super silly new-wave keyboard in “Buddy Holly” to the mumbled dialogue that runs through “Undone” (the band and their friends chatting were a backup plan after DGC refused to clear dialog from an old sci-fi film, “Peanuts,” and more).

The fact that “Only In Dreams” is eight glorious minutes long is Blue’s greatest example of self-indulgence gone right. It confronts the two most perilous teen-boy anxieties—talking to a girl you really like and dancing in public. It’s fiery, gorgeous, well-played, and devastatingly sad. Sharp’s trudging bassline guides the way forward for the narrator, whose fear of stepping on his crush’s toenails is temporarily silenced by the band’s total calamity. Rock’n’roll teaches us that extreme volume can quiet the voices of doubt inside our heads and numb the pain of living inside our awkward bodies. In this sense, the climaxes on “Only in Dreams,” starting around the song’s midpoint, are rock’n’roll lessons of a lifetime. But it’s the big build at the 6:45 mark that plays like a beta male transfiguration. Having re-recorded Cropper’s guitar parts in one take after essentially firing him following Blue’s 1993 recording at Electric Lady, Cuomo ends up axe-battling himself until he’s soloing like the metal gods he grew up worshipping. Wilson’s drumming—an underrated and idiosyncratic force throughout Weezer’s discography—drives home the catharsis. His cymbals crash from every angle and his tricky rolls play like percussive triple axels. By the end of the song, you’re back to reality, exhausted but ready for a fight—even if it’s just against your own doubting voices.

For all the talk about Rivers Cuomo’s anemic masculinity, The Blue Album has a unifying thread of identity that supersedes gender. An essay on the Smiths pointed out that, “Asking people about their interest in the Smiths is another way of asking this question: ‘How did you survive your teenage years?’” The same could be said of Weezer’s debut. Blue quivers with isolation if you look past the pastiche, the deflective humor, and the guitar lines that make you sit up tall. The emotion Weezer tapped into is echoed in music sometimes considered distinctly millennial due to its high levels of anxiety, from Death Cab for Cutie and Carseat Headrest to Mitski’s Puberty 2 and even Drake at his most neurotic.

For as classic as the album is considered now, Blue didn’t make the 1994 Pazz & Jop year-end critics’ poll. Back then, Weezer were considered alt opportunists or even Pavement ripoffs—a comparison that seems silly now, looking at the distinct rock strains since indebted to Cuomo. But MTV and radio airplay for “Buddy Holly” and “Undone — The Sweater Song” made Weezer huge, and The Blue Album went double-platinum within 15 months of its release. Over the next three years, as Weezer 1.0 slowly imploded (bye-bye Matt Sharp, hello rotating door of bassists), the record would sell a million more and be well on its way to canonization. By 2003, Pitchfork named it one of the best records of the 1990s; two years later, Rolling Stone heralded it as the 299th greatest album ever. And so Blue now sits in a sweet spot of commercial accessibility and critical adoration, a combination that guarantees the album will make its way into the hands of a certain kind of bespectacled teenager for decades to come—the ones who really need it. Cuomo never wrote a song as indelible as “Seems Like Teen Spirit,” but he did reach generations of rock kids, proving that coolness is optional if you study hard enough.