2004 and 2005 were big years for music. Both years saw the release of any number of albums that I return to over and over again. I try not to let my musical tastes be defined by a few albums or a few bands, but it’s hard to deny that the music released in 2004 and 2005 left a lasting imprint on that first decade of the twenty-first century. Not the least of these albums are ‘Funeral’ by Arcade Fire and ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ by Wolf Parade. They’re the kind of albums I look back on and remember where I was the first time I listened to them. When I listen to them now I still have moments where I hear a new phrase, be it lyrically or musically, and I get goose bumps as though I’m hearing it for the first time. And they’re the kind of albums that a single live performance can amplify one hundred times.

The problem with albums like these is that everything Wolf Parade and Arcade Fire do afterward will be compared to these debut successes. If someone’s first impression is a homerun, everything else that band does has to live up to or exceed that initial impression. Albums like these become the high water mark. It’s an unfair standard to hold someone to, but it’s the way the art world works. I try my best not to live by that standard, but with albums like these you’re almost afraid of what the follow-up will sound like. Will they be able to live up? In the end it doesn’t matter because the past is the past and you have to accept it. Five or six years down the road is a long time, and you are not the only thing that has changed. That being said, Wolf Parade and Arcade Fire have released albums worthy of attention this summer, and they both deserve a lot of praise.

‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ was one of those albums that I knew right away I loved. The first time I listened to “I’ll Believe In Anything” I listened to it two or three times before I could let the rest of the album go. The only other song that’s done that to me is “Modern Girl” by Sleater-Kinney, but I digress. It was obvious listening to ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ that Wolf Parade is a collective with two distinct creative voices in Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner. This became even more obvious in subsequent years with the success of their respective side projects, Sunset Rubdown and the Handsome Furs. Early in Wolf Parade’s life that distinction was almost a dichotomy, as though the voices of Krug and Boeckner fought each other and drew their strength the way complimentary colors fuel their opposite. I even had friends who split themselves into opposing camps – the Krug side and the Boeckner side. I’ll admit I leaned towards Krug (see my love of Sunset Rubdown), but I loved everything about ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary.’ This was an album that lived in my car for weeks, that accompanied me to the laundromat or to the garage waiting room, and I learned to love every song.

In 2008 Wolf Parade released ‘At Mount Zoomer,’ which admittedly was not ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ but by no means did it fail. I knew going into it that three years had passed, and I like ‘At Mount Zoomer.’ Krug and Boeckner had married their dichotomous sounds into one entity, and the music benefited. ‘At Mount Zoomer’ was not a bad album, but it was not one of my favorites of 2008. I don’t think it even made my top ten. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. I liked everything Wolf Parade did with it. I liked that they made an investment in their future. Listening to ‘At Mount Zoomer’ I could tell this was a stronger band, a more unified band. The album itself didn’t have quite the staying power that ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ had, and I delegated it to iTunes rotation rather than popping it in the CD player during downtime or on snow days. It was time to wait and see what Wolf Parade did next.

Now it is 2010, and on June 29 Wolf Parade released ‘Expo 86.’ Whatever Krug and Boeckner did to marry their sounds has blossomed into something extraordinary. ‘Expo 86’ doesn’t wait to get going. The first track, “Cloud Shadow On the Mountain,” kicks in without hesitation, and that’s the attitude Wolf Parade create with ‘Expo 86.’ This is an album to be listened to loud. ‘Expo 86’ is a voyage of highly danceable synth rock, and it is an album I want to hear performed live. It’s as though Wolf Parade cares. They care enough to make an album so infectious and so listenable that you want to hear it reverberate in an auditorium. You want this music to vibrate through every cubic inch of your body because listening to it on a stereo isn’t enough. Lyrically I need to sit with ‘Expo 86’ a while longer, but in “Two Men In New Tuxedos” Spencer Krug addresses the issue of dichotomy with Dan Boeckner. “You’ve got the promise that I gave you,” Krug says. “You’ve got the strongest one/ We are two oxen under one whip/ We are two men in new tuxedos/ And we are ready to jump from behind the wall.” Anyone who thought Wolf Parade could never surpass the high water mark of ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ can go to hell. Living up to the past doesn’t matter. ‘Expo 86’ is the present and I’ll listen this stupid thing to death.

Where ‘Expo 86’ is Wolf Parade at their infectious best (so far), Arcade Fire released an album last week that is nearly on the opposite end of the spectrum. This is going to work against them, and I think that’s entirely unfair. Let’s get the reminiscing out of the way right now. ‘Funeral’ is a modern classic. Enough has been said about ‘Funeral’ by too many people since it converted so many in 2004. One of the things I love bout Arcade Fire is that their albums make me sit for a moment after I listen to them. I’m not immediately blown away by their albums, but the first time I listened to ‘Funeral’ I knew it would be something I loved. There was enough happening on ‘Funeral’ that I had to sit with it and experience it two or three more times, and I did, and two or three listens later I was looking up the French translation for those lines in “Une Anee Sans Lumiere” and “Haiti,” driving with the windows down and screaming along with “Wake Up,” and thinking “I carved your name across my eyelids/ You pray for rain, I pray for blindness” was the only line in any song that ever hit the heartbreak nail on the head. And then reality quickly sunk in. After enough listens and loving ‘Funeral’ as much as I did, I realized there would be a follow-up album.

‘Neon Bible’ is a great album. It’s not ‘Funeral.’ Arcade Fire will never release ‘Funeral’ again. If they do release ‘Funeral’ again, they are doing everything wrong. I don’t want Arcade Fire to repeat themselves. They are better than that. They are more creative than that and they have so much more to say. If you’re expecting everything Arcade Fire does from now until the end of time to sound like “Rebellion (Lies),” you can keep waiting while the rest of us move on. ‘Neon Bible’ was an outstanding follow-up to ‘Funeral,’ another one of those albums I knew I would love after two or three listens, and I did. I was lucky enough to see Arcade Fire three years ago at DAR Constitution Hall, and it made ‘Neon Bible’ that much more memorable. Too many people didn’t like ‘Neon Bible,’ or they say the same thing, that it took them a while to get over ‘Funeral’ and give ‘Neon Bible’ a chance, but it will never live up to ‘Funeral.’ An outlook like that is symptomatic of a serious case of tunnel vision. With an outlook like that you’ll never fully appreciate Arcade Fire’s third album, ‘The Suburbs.’

Last week (on August 3) Arcade Fire released ‘The Suburbs.’ Already people are writing it off as a failure. I’ve heard it called repetitive. I’ve heard it called a disappointment. I’ve heard it called simply ‘meh.’ What seems to be the common factor among negative reviewers is the lack of a catchy tune on ‘The Suburbs,’ that ‘The Suburbs’ has good lyrics but you can’t dance to it. I don’t think dancing is the point here.

As with ‘Funeral’ and ‘Neon Bible’ I was not immediately drawn into ‘The Suburbs,’ but the difference between ‘The Suburbs’ and its predecessors is that when ‘The Suburbs’ ended I didn’t just sit for a moment. I found myself locked in a lengthy philosophical analysis of American quality of life. ‘The Suburbs’ is an album very much of its time. It is an album about economics, about struggle. ‘The Suburbs’ is an album about coming home after escaping from the prison of youth and realizing home is even worse now than it was ten years ago, but you wish with all your might that it was still ten years ago and you were locked in that old prison of youth.

‘The Suburbs’ is not a musically daring album, but it doesn’t need to be. The strength here is in the lyrics. In the title track’s opening lines Win Butler captures every kid’s desire to escape, “In the suburbs I learned to drive and you told me we’d never survive/ Grab your mother’s keys, we’re leaving.” What our parents built meant nothing to us at the time, but now that it’s falling apart we find ourselves falling apart vicariously. “So can you understand why I want a daughter while I’m still young/ I want to hold her hand and show her some beauty before all this damage is done.” This album is all about watching the markets crash, running through wilderness streets and searching vainly for an echo, folding your arms tight in youthful defiance without realizing you can’t lift yourself up with folded arms. Much of ‘The Suburbs’ is about driving, about learning to drive and driving through the sprawl as though the simple act of driving is enough to break free. Sprawl is the key word here.

The best track for me is “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).” “Living in the sprawl, the dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains/ And there’s no end in sight.” Go for a drive today, tonight. Drive to the fringes of urban sprawl. Or just drive to the suburbs and see what it’s really like – all the shopping plazas full of empty storefronts and beyond them the new shopping plazas where new stores will be dead within five years, only to have even more shopping plazas built beyond them. Go for a drive through economic low tide and tell me it’s not the most depressing thing you’ve ever seen. People grow up in the sprawl and want to get the hell out. Yes, ‘The Suburbs’ can be repetitive at times, but this is the sprawl. This is the repetition of dead shopping malls in the suburbs. I think people don’t like ‘The Suburbs’ because it hits too close to home. By no means is ‘The Suburbs’ the catchiest album of 2010, but I would call it the most thoughtful. I don’t think I’ve ever come across an album that has me wanting to write a forty page essay. I probably could write a forty page essay about Arcade Fire, but I’ve already written enough (for now).

Like Wolf Parade, a fellow Montreal band that found success in the early 2000’s, Arcade Fire have proven they don’t need to live up to a meaningless high water mark. They know we are living in the sprawl. Get up and dance if you want, but you can’t deny this is a new wasteland. Maybe dancing to Wolf Parade is the only way to keep our sanity when faced with all the dead things left in the recession’s wake.

Rates

It’s been acknowledged that the average artist probably doesn’t have a large income, so the service charge is negotiable.  The rates vary depending on the location, distance of transport, gas prices, and items being transported.

About the murmur Van

• aerodynamic in build
• large storage space
• yellow

For more info

Contact Jeremy Arn at jeremyarn@gmail.com

With one more month of unbearable humidity ahead of us and nearly two months of rest and relaxation behind us it is time to look back and reflect. Although truth be told my summer hasn’t borne much rest and relaxation. It was Homer Simpson who said, “When you get a job like me you’ll miss every summer.” As it is, I take a moment to reflect on my summer – my summer and its lack of writing. Murmur took a brief hiatus, and I took an even longer hiatus as one thing led to another. To make up for it I believe I owe everyone a mix.

This year’s summer mix is called “Vibrations In the Air Have to Come From Somewhere.” I set out assembling these songs back in May with modest determination. I had recently overdrawn my checking account for the millionth-ma-billionth time, after I spent two months under the impression that I was fiscally all right, and I’d be damned if I let the man keep me from having fun this summer.

The first half of these songs reflect that attitude. “Bankrobber” is the type of Clash you listen to while you grill barbecued pineapple hamburgers with your best friends Memorial Day weekend, and “To Be Someone (Didn’t We Have a Nice Time)” is the Jam reminding me I’m screwed. Then about halfway through May I had the worst week of my life. Anyone who follows Murmur or looks in the links will know what happened. The summer mix completely changed gears, and I let it go because you have to let the mix speak its own language. A mix is like a self-portrait of the person assembling it. How do you feel at a given moment? How does your music logically arrange itself in a way that best illustrates a few weeks in your life? This mix is what it is – two halves of time and space – and I love it. I hope you love it, too.

Vibrations In the Air Have To Come From Somewhere – Summer 2010

1) Bankrobber (Robber Dub) – the Clash

2) One By One – the Black Seeds

3) Mother Earth – Memphis Slim

4) Singer Songwriter – Okkervil River

5) Empty Heart – Wolf People

6) To Be Someone (Didn’t We Have A Nice Time) – the Jam

7) William It Was Really Nothing – the Smiths

Big Boys – Elvis Costello and the Attractions

9) The Mall and Misery – Broken Bells

10) The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us! – Sufjan Stevens

11) Temptation Inside Your Heart – The Velvet Underground

12) Combat Rock – Sleater-Kinney

13) Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want the Truth – Minutemen

14) Planetary – Rainer Maria

15) Burn 2 Ash – Chad Van Gaalen

16) Start A War – the National

17) Functionality – Pylon

(It stinks that the song where I got this mix’s title has no videos on the internet. This is a short video of Pylon, the greatest of all Athens bands past and present. Go out and get ‘Gyrate’ right now.)

For the next 2 months, Danny’s art will be exhibited at Tryst (coffeehouse/bar) and is up for sale.

Tryst

2459 18th Street Northwest
Washington, DC 20009

If you’re interested in purchasing one of Danny’s art pieces, contact him at:

normalthealienboy@gmail.com

You can also follow him through Twitter @ D_JeanJacques

Download

‘Boxer’ may have been the single most overrated album of the Twenty-first century’s first decade, and the National may have been the single most overrated band. I gave up trying to like ‘Boxer’ because it wasn’t going to happen, and I wasn’t going to kid myself. I formed my opinion, and yes it is a negative opinion, but no one can say I didn’t give ‘Boxer’ a chance. I’m fair, but I’m also honest.

The words we say, be they the casual happenstance of every day conversation or the semi-formal declarations we feel entitled to make on the internet, are meaningless. It is impossible to see the future or to even comprehend the paths weaving concurrently to our own that will one day intersect us. Chance encounters in which we reiterate opinions posted elsewhere have nothing to do with what happens a week later. Even if they do, there is no way for us to know. We say what we say because of what unfolds immediately before us. In a future moment you look back and wonder what a past moment, if directed differently, could have yielded. There is no correct answer, just as there is no blame to shoulder and absolutely no dignified fulfillment to ‘what might have been.’ The suddenness of reality bears down once this fact becomes vivid, and when faced with the overwhelming shadow of truth all you can do is cry on the bathroom floor.

I last saw my friend Kim on May 15. I pulled into the parking lot of the coffee shop that employs me and saw a green Hyundai. ‘That looks like Kim’s car,’ I mused to myself, and I parked next to it, engaged in my typical prework ritual of listening to music until I’ve unwound enough to face another day. Sunset Rubdown was playing, and I settled into the driver’s seat, closed my eyes, and heard a knock on my passenger side window. ‘Oh, it was Kim’s car.’ I rolled down the window as Kim waved, and after I said hello the first thing out of her mouth was, “Do you know why you don’t like the National? Because their lyrics suck.”

What followed was a lengthy but casual conversation about the new National album, ‘High Violet,’ and how we felt it compared to their earlier work. I repeated my opinion from the review I wrote a few weeks ago, that ‘High Violet’ was a grower, that it wasn’t going to ignite until somewhere in the middle of the album, and that I like that so much more than ‘Boxer.’ Kim’s stance was firm, though. She told me she never liked Matt Berninger’s lyrics, that “I’m going to eat your brains” is one of the lamest phrases she’s ever heard, that she has no time for something so flimsy. All of this seemed odd to me since I remembered her deeply in love with ‘Boxer.’ I kept talking about ‘Boxer,’ and I believe my exact words were, “I stopped kidding myself. You know? It wasn’t going to happen. It was just one of those things. Time to move on.”

We kept talking, and I got Kim thinking about “I came to Ohio on a swarm of bees.” Maybe I made some headway for her to like ‘High Violet.’ We parted ways a little bit later as I went into work and Kim went to meet another friend of ours. I worked my shift that day and five other shifts the following week, and I thought about Kim a lot. I thought about how sporadically I see her, and I thought about how I love seeing her because we have conversations just like that when we do run into each other, be it at a party or out somewhere unexpected. It was just a part of life, that conversation and all the other conversations we have. I lived and I worked as I always do.

A week later, a week to the day and maybe even the hour, I got a call from the friend who Kim went to meet after our parking lot encounter. Kim killed herself on May 21. The days following that phone call were numb. Everyone talks about numbness when facing shock. I had no idea what it felt like until I experienced it. The only word to describe it is numb, and nothing more can be said to further illustrate it. Just know that you don’t want to feel it. Yesterday afternoon I had my first honest to God cry over this mess, and while the ship is starting to right itself I don’t think it will ever be on a perfectly even keel again. Everything I saw and experienced last week has guaranteed that nothing will ever be the same. Wherever Kim is now, no matter how much I want to go after her, I can’t. It’s a bitch, that barrier between the now and the nether, but both halves are equally real and equally intangible. And we all have our place.

Wednesday evening last week we were together at Kim’s mother’s house, talking about Kim, remembering Kim, laughing and crying when we needed to. It was late, and I had to work early the next morning, but just being there and listening to these stories, chiming in when I had to, it was the first good time I’d had in four days. Smiling and laughing again when I hadn’t cried at all, not yet anyway. I thought I could face this thing and get over it. Then the conversation went from one thing to another, and suddenly I’m hearing Kim’s sister say, “The last song she listened to was ‘Start a War’ by the National.” My brain passed through a black hole. I was everywhere and nowhere and I needed to be somewhere else, so I ran. We were actually talking about this. We were talking about the last song Kim listened to. Not only that, but the last song Kim listened to was directly related to the last conversation I ever had with Kim.

I am not an idiot. I don’t think anything I said that afternoon had any bearing on the choices Kim made. Nor do I think anything I could have said would have made things happen differently. The paths were already weaving just beyond our comprehension, and while I also don’t believe in predestination I also know there was nothing I could do. But the topic of our last conversation was the last band that Kim ever listened to. That’s just haunting to me. All of these unanswered questions – was she already thinking about this when we were talking? Did the National mean that much to her? I can’t answer these questions and I don’t want to. But where does that leave me? I’m stuck with the memory of dry May heat on a Saturday afternoon, sitting in my black car with sticky hot black upholstery sucking up hot air crawling through the open passenger window, my air conditioner spilling cold air on my knees, Sunset Rubdown whispering while I lean over to talk to Kim who knocked on my passenger window, and we’re talking about how much she thinks the lyrics on ‘High Violet’ suck. Nothing I did or said made this happen, but the memory still lingers. The memory lingers and my arms wish I had hugged Kim that afternoon before I went to work.

One of the things we talked about last Wednesday was how much music we associate with Kim and how much music we can’t listen to anymore. Something about the chain of events and the happenstance of casual conversation made me wonder. I wondered if I could face another listen. Call me masochistic, but I needed to face this thing head on. Pull ‘Boxer’ from the shelf. Give it another listen. Wait until track eight and see how it makes you feel. The strange thing is that track eight was always the place where I would glance irritably at the back cover and think to myself, ‘There are still four more freaking songs to go on this thing.’ This time around here comes “Start a War,” here come the goosebumps, and I’m with her. I’m listening to ‘Boxer’ and I see it. Maybe in some way I see Kim through it. Maybe that’s overly poetic drivel. But I’m listening to ‘Boxer’ again right now. It was not my symbolic chosen music while I wrote this. Rather it is simply the third disc in tonight’s rotation. I understand that I am probably including ‘Boxer’ in current CD rotations as a tribute to Kim, but so what? ‘Boxer’ is on my iTunes again well over a year after I removed it. I will listen to it in album shuffle. I will hear “Start a War” and I will not skip it in irritation. I will wish for something better than before. I will wish for something more, and I will remember a chance encounter with Kim on a Saturday afternoon. After all the grieving and knowing there’s still more to come, the only thing I wish for right now is a chance to tell Kim how much she made me love the National last week. Somehow, though, something tells me Kim already knows this. That makes me happy.

Kimberly Swartz

Three years ago the National released an album called ‘Boxer.’ Many people hailed ‘Boxer’ as 2007’s album of the year. I was not included in this group of people. For a long time, long after 2007 ended and the shit-storm that was 2008 began for me, I straddled the fence regarding the National and ‘Boxer.’

At one moment I could see what everyone was talking about – a weighty album, a meaty album with nooks and crannies full of juices and flavors, an album anchored by the strong track “Mistaken For Strangers.” Then the next moment would come and I was on the other side, the negative side, seeing through ‘Boxer’ and agreeing that “Mistaken For Strangers” was indeed the strongest track, except that it fell in the number 2 slot and the rest of the album disintegrated afterward.

I oscillated back and forth like this for a long time, even as late as last year, and then I finally gave up. Let me defend myself for a second. I cringe to call it giving up, because I firmly hold this opinion. ‘Boxer’ may have been the single most overrated album of the Twenty-first century’s first decade, and the National may have been the single most overrated band. I gave up trying to like ‘Boxer’ because it wasn’t going to happen, and I wasn’t going to kid myself. I formed my opinion, and yes it is a negative opinion, but no one can say I didn’t give ‘Boxer’ a chance. I’m fair, but I’m also honest.

In 2010 the National are back with ‘High Violet.’ After only a few listens I am experiencing the same oscillation between love and pulling-out-my-hair that I did with ‘Boxer.’ For the most part, though, this time as I sit on the fence I have both of my legs on the positive side. The best thing I can say about ‘High Violet’ is that this one is everything I wish ‘Boxer’ had been.

The worst thing I can say about ‘High Violet’ is that it doesn’t kick in until the later tracks, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What dragged down ‘Boxer’ for me was having such a strong track like “Mistaken For Strangers” so early in the placement. After the high I was stuck with a sustained low – an intense low, yes, but still a low. ‘Boxer’ never recovered. With ‘High Violet’ the National sustain the emotional drive they are so excellent at igniting like a slow motion Roman candle.

My first focal point isn’t until track 6, “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” when Mike Berninger sings, “I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees.” On my first listen of ‘High Violet’ I was rewriting a longer work, and that line alone grabbed me. I knew I had to listen to ‘High Violet’ two more times, three more times, however many times it takes not to love ‘High Violet’ but to at least understand it. “It’s taking forever,” Berninger says on “Runaway,” and I want it to. Maybe I will never understand it, but that isn’t the point. The point is to listen. The point is to try. Most of all, the point is to be lost. I want to be lost in the tangled honesty of ‘High Violet.’ Here at the end, five hundred words later, I leap from the fence to spend the rest of the year with the National.

Everyone was black, except me.  At one point an Asian couple walked in for about 5 minutes then left.  I on the other hand felt somewhat privileged to be there.  I saw it as an opportunity to see the inside underground world of hip hop.  I was introduced to many different musicians.  The bill composed of artists from DC and NYC.

Everybody seemed to know each other and there was a lot of support from the crowd.  I can’t really tell you who were the talents that performed.  Then again I can’t really tell who was part of the crowd or a posse or featured talent.  The microphone was being handed off every minute to a new person rapping.  The entire floor was the stage and there were no limits.  Rappers would walk around with the wireless mic and jump bar counter tops and going in and out of the crowd.  It was very intimate.  Everybody was dancing or putting their hands in the air and cheering.

I thought that photography wise, this was an extremely hard event to cover.  There wasn’t much lighting, everyone is black and I’m not using a flash, and because there was barely any light I had a very hard time focusing.  But what I got was very dramatic lighting, dynamic blurring motion and intensity expressed by the artists performing with all their passion.

A Thousand Blooms was held at Bloombars in Columbia Heights, a small venue that is focused on art and culture.  It may easily be missed as you’re walking down the street, yet once you step in it’s difficult not to feel at home.  The art exhibit received a great turnout as it attracted not only spectators who received an invite in advance, but also random people passing by.

The film screening, which was directed by Richard, was a short film about mixed couples and the prejudice the family goes through.  It was about 30 minutes and received strong support.  Overall, it was an event that received a great response.