Mississippi John Hurt

ZACH THAT:

One of the greatest things about music is the fact that there is no way you have listened to every band/solo act out there. Right now, one of your favorite albums, that you’ve never heard before, is floating around just waiting for you to discover its magic. Sometimes it takes mainstream media or a friend to bring this revelation to you…be it Nick Drake’s Pink Moon in that VW commercial, Elliott Smith in Good Will Hunting, or a friend crying out: You’ve never heard of ___________!?!?

I had one of these amazing moments this week when I sat down to listen to a six disc Anthology of American Folk Music (highly recommended by the way). A track began to play, Spike Driver Blues, and I just had that emotional moment…the music had found me. Mississippi John Hurt was a musician from Avalon, Mississippi who learned to play the guitar at the age of nine. He worked on a farm in the 1920’s and wrote lyrics about the life he lived, perfect for his folk melodies. At the age of 70, he was finally asked to record his original songs for the first time and ended up recording four studio albums.

The music is full of soul, every pluck of the guitar string resonates deep within me, every breath of a lyric landing soft and safe on my ears. The album to go after for all you vinyl collectors is Today, a perfect, yes perfect, set of eleven songs that have jumped up into my top twenty albums of all time. This is all I’ve listened to for the last week and I have to say, it’s reminded me why I love music, it’s a living thing that searches for us, wants our approval, to be a comforting friend. Hopefully some of you will check out Mississippi John Hurt, and for some, it might have the same impact it did on me.

HIPSTER RUNOFF = GOOD or BAD?

Almost as big as Animal Collective’s MPP, the highly satirical Alt Bro bashing blog Hipster Runoff has grabbed the attention of bloggers, music news seekers, and most importantly…Alt Bros. When I first heard of the sensation I checked out the site, shrugged and out clicked to another blog. Over the next week I found myself going back more frequently and soon it was bookmarked on my Google Reader. I still read every post, but what bothers me is the fact that I’m not sure if I like it or not. If you read any of my posts you will find that I’m highly opinionated and when it comes to this indie cultural sensation, I just can’t decide what side of the fence I’m on.

Let’s start with the good. The guy (I’m assuming it’s a man) is sharp. His Animal Collective post was thoughtful and one of the best reads I’ve had on the Internet in awhile. Satire, which is usually done poorly (especially by our generation) is in good hands with Carles, who chooses every stupid word with care. It’s fun to have a finger pointed at you and not realize it. I’m definitely not an Alt Bro, but I have strong “hipster” tendencies when it comes to shrugging off bands I used to love and now hate due to tweens falling in love with them. He captures a lot of what is wrong with my musical quirks and I’m one who can laugh at my own faults. He doesn’t give numbered reviews. This is very important to me when it comes to Hipster Runoff because I don’t care what numerical value he gives an album, we have Pitchfork for satirical reviews, right…nobody still takes those seriously do they? The biggest pro to Hipster Runoff is his passion for not seeming to care. You can tell this guy is having fun writing these articles no matter how depressed/nonchalant he may appear through the writing.

Now, the bad. I feel like the blog is a one trick pony. The more I read, the more I find that every one in four posts are actually fresh pieces of satire that haven’t appeared on his site already. I’m not expecting the brilliant display of thought shown in the AC post everytime, but I feel like the blog cranks out posts just for hits or to appease an ADD generation. I would much rather have one post a day that really has a lot of time put into it. It’s not a music news/mp3 blog, so frequency/beating the other music blogs to the punch is of no relevance…take your time and write strong articles that got readers there in the first place. Second, and if you are twitter friends with him you will understand this…the guy is just depressing sometimes. He has one of the biggest music blogs in the world, cheer up buddy. I know that it’s a staple of his satire, but it’s getting stale. I like the mysterious persona but the same joke over and over needs to stop. I also hate (and kind of secretly love) when Alt kids talk about how much they love or hate Hipster Runoff. He wins either way. He won because I wrote this article…and like therapy writing this has made me decide what side of the fence I’m on.

I like Hipster Runoff. It’s fun and I’ve been over thinking the whole relevance to the indie music community. I think it should be one great post a day and I know that in a year or so it will get really old, but right now, I like it. What does this mean…nothing. But, I can now read his articles without the shame while laughing…I’ll just laugh and enjoy. Thanks HRO for a fun daily read.

REVIEW: Dent May & his Magnificent Ukele - The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele

You gotta hand it to Dent May. There's been an explosion of great artists in the past few years who have turned to, shall we say, more ethnic folk sounds to make their indie rock. From the Balkanized sound of A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Beirut, and Man Man to the afro-inspired tracks of Vampire Weekend and Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, it's as if Harry Smith went global, infusing your non-mainstream sounds with folk music from other cultures, other lands and other times. Dent May leans that way as well, but his tunes are openly ironic sardonic tales of losers doing theater, the impossibility of trying to get people to dance, and reefer-smoking kids working minium wage jobs while thinking their better than you. It's a sound that owes more to other great ironists like Randy Newman (pre-Hollywood scholck) and Serge Gainsborough.

May's music is poppy enough to underscore a 60s swinger film, but filled with enough disdain to make the hipsters seem coy. Take the lyrics to "College Town Boy": "He's smoking reefer every day now / His tastes are awfully high-brow / College Town Boy get off your ass and do something." All the while you're singing along, you may also get the feeling that you're being indicted. "Meet Me in the Garden" juxtaposes a bucolic lover's rendezvous with domestic violence -- "I only hurt you 'cuz I love you." "At the Academic Conference" portrays academics as boozing, floozy brains who wear their heart on their sleeves, hypocritically showing up for "for the booze."

If mockery is the sincerest form of flattery, then there are a lot of folks being flattered in this album. The sound even seems to take a couple pot shots at the unwavering earnestness of Zach Condon, taking the instrument (the ukele) that proclaimed "If I was young, I'd flee this town" and flipping it around to say "lately I've been drinking every night / I'm over being sober / I'm an alcoholic." Maybe I'm reading too much into the instrument choice, but it's impossible to ignore the uke on this album, after all it is Dent May and his Magnificent Ukele, which does sound magnificent on this album. For such a small 4 stringed thing, it's incredible the amount of melodies that fly out of the sound hole. If there's one criticism that I could level at this album, I'd point to songs which sound like the previous, moments where the uke isn't as versitile as it has been, but overall, when you're dropping this much irony and with such rivieting sounds, it's hard to raise too much of a fuss.