City Livin'

It's been two weeks since I moved, and I can tentatively say that Toronto agrees with me. What the apartment still lacks in furniture and décor (it's a slow process), it makes up for in space. This, along with the very good roommate situation and the nearby organic farmer's market, brings out a domesticity I haven't seen in three years. I've been washing walls and cooking like mad: beet borscht, fennel stir fry and sausages, Moroccan inspired kale, Greek salads. This is a very good development.

Toronto is all about neighbourhoods. While every major street is packed with businesses, you won't find what you're looking for unless you're in the right neighbourhood. For example, don't really bother looking for bubble tea unless you're in Koreatown or Chinatown, and don't expect to find a fabric store unless you're in the Design District. Luckily, I'm within easy walking distance of the bustling nightlife of Little Italy/Portugal (rather indistinct at this point), and the ever more interesting Bloordale strip (Bloor between Dufferin and Lansdowne), home to some fabulous vintage/antique stores.

My proximity to Little Italy (College Street) also places me near one of my favourite TO havens: Soundscapes. The tiny store carries a fantastic selection of new albums and, more importantly, sells tickets to every concert with a fraction of the service charge Ticketmaster tacks on. You have to go elsewhere to dig through the bins, but at Soundscapes you can keep your eye on what's happening around Toronto, and even hear the occasional in-house concert. I already purchased tickets to the Eric Chenaux CD release, which happened tonight at a perfectly wonderful church venue called The Music Gallery, and to a Deerhoof/Xiu Xiu show, two bands I've been dying to see for years!


I was very nervous to cycle in the big city, but most of my fears were way off base. The vehicle traffic moves slowly, and bike lanes run on several major thoroughfares. I'm still terrified of getting too near the streetcar tracks. Getting stuck in one of those would be disastrous. It will also take some time to get used to the bicycle traffic! I'm not a great cyclist, but I have the right bike for city riding – a ten speed with cruiser handlebars (I feel very European) – and find myself constantly needing to pass slower bikes. This does not always work. Yesterday I was stuck behind a guy who was listening to an iPod and drinking a coffee while perched on a bike far too small for him (seriously, his knees stuck out at odd angles on either side) and tottering precariously back and forth across the bicycle lane. At least being trapped behind him for five minutes made for a good laugh!

Another surprise: Toronto is friendly! I get the sense that, once you get out of downtown, people actually like conversing with strangers!

I have some ambivalence about what I'm actually doing here. I have taken a scholastic step back and am enrolled in a Bachelor of Education program. Teaching is right on, but I already miss being a graduate student. However, the very different nature of the work means I will have time/mental energy for more discretionary reading, and without another forum for discussion, I imagine the blog posts will become more frequent.

Albums that changed the way I listen to music - Part IV of IV

Part IV of IV: New Trends

Welcome to the final installment of this patchy attempt to analyze my own musical taste.

Since 2005, one or two Canadian artists have dominated my musical landscape each year, due mostly to the excitement that builds with repeated live shows. Final Fantasy owned 2005, Elliott Brood was the sound of 2006, and Jon-Rae & the River dominated the summer of 2007. The Acorn and Rock Plaza Central filled 2007 and 2008, each fueled by the release of a brilliant concept album, and the raucous bluesy gospel of Bruce Peninsula marked 2009. I think I may have finally tired of Ontario death-country/folk-rock collectives. A very different strain of recent releases has done more to alter my overall experience of music in the last several years.

Panda Bear – Person Pitch
Also dating back to my summer of post-punk and gin, Person Pitch is the perfect hot weather album. It sounds like The Beach Boys, if they had turned electronic and done even more drugs. This album was my introduction to that whole swath of recent music that takes elements of pop and combines it with the repetitive, mood-altering qualities of electronic. Prior to Person Pitch, I couldn't really get behind music that eschewed typical melodies in favour of repetition; after Person Pitch I began listening to Animal Collective and even found myself appreciating Philip Glass (I attended a ballet set to his music and had something of an “a-ha!” moment). Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) seems to have his fingers in a lot of great stuff these days, collaborating with Atlas Sound (the solo project of Deerhunter's Bradford Cox) and with German ambient electro musician Pantha du Prince (see below).

Zomby – Where Were You in ‘92
It took this great throwback house/dub-step album to make me realize that club music needn't be bad just because I don't want to dance to it. Only one or two of the tracks on this album actually makes me want to get up and groove (and that's only because I recently learned what house dance looks like), yet all of the tracks rock. Once the album began to make sense to me, I could hardly listen to anything else.

Pantha Du Prince – Black Noise

Again, once I really started listening to this album, I could hardly listen to anything else. Never thought I would become a fan of ambient electronic, but here it is, my favourite album of 2010 thus far. The songs emerge gradually, taking on many textures and rhythms, and then changing altogether in one moment. This album will never be boring. Incidentally, the cover art has been my desktop background for about seven month. It shows a tiny church accessible only by boat on the edge of the Koenigsee in Bavaria, a perfectly gorgeous spot.




Dirty Projectors – Rise Above
Dave Longstreth et al have really made waves in the Brooklyn music scene in the last few years, and hence, in the North American music scene. Their latest full-length, Bitte Orca, is the critical darling and crowd favourite, and they have since had relatively high-profile collaborations with David Byrne and, most recently, Bjork. This output has all been fantastic, but, as I mentioned in a post from last year, I'm still partial to the earlier “cover” album. Rise Above is Longstreth's rewritten version of Black Flag's 1981 album of the same title, and the combination of the simple punk lyrics and the sparse instrumentals makes this a painfully vulnerable listen. Like a Xiu Xiu album. The alternating minimalism and crashing noise seems characteristic of a lot of “avant garde” pop rock these days, and I like it. Frankly, they're not that great live, so here's the album version of my favourite track.

Thus endeth the series.

What for privacy?

Justin EH Smith is awesome again:

To the oft-expressed concern that too much of our life is finding its way online, to be mined and held against us by future Orwellian governments and humorless employers, I always reply, what life? I have no life left other than what leaves a digital trace. Do you? Are you sure?

1965

I watched the first episode of Mad Men Season 4. Nice start. Even better end:

Dionysus and the Crucified

Two days from now I will be defending my M.A. thesis. I conclude the entire paper with the following paragraph:

This paper began with a quote from Erich Heller: “[Nietzsche] is, by the very texture of his soul and mind, one of the most radically religious natures that the nineteenth century brought forth, but is endowed with an intellect which guards, with the aggressive jealousy of a watchdog, all approaches to the temple” (Heller 11). Heller identifies a tension between Nietzsche's intellectual atheism and his residual Christian piety, but this thesis presents another option. Nietzsche does not struggle to rid himself of religiosity; rather, his struggle is his religiosity. The Dionysian faith of which Valadier speaks so eloquently requires a constant overcoming, a constant vigilance against idols, and a constant affirmation. Nietzsche is religious because of, and not in spite of, his resistance to the security of human constructions.

More later.

Roll Credits

I love the breadth of material Justin Erik Halldor Smith covers in his blog. Recently he has posted an anthropological criticism of militant political correctness, an important tirade against the Western hegemony (and failed history) perpetrated by philosophy textbooks, and some suggestions on how not to age as a music fan. Of the last piece he writes:

The overwhelming response to my recent post against eighties music was that I should quit worrying and just 'listen to what I like'. It would take a naïveté I can barely imagine to believe that this is what one is doing when one listens to music. Music is music, but it is also (and this is especially true of pop music) a sort of totemic cosmology: an imposition of order on the world through distinctions of value.

Read the post.

Incidentally, I like The Cure. It's like constantly being in the end credits of a pleasant if rather plot-less 90s movie, and that's a cosmological order I can live with.

Or the better version. Jangle jangle.

Albums that changed the way I listen to music - Part III of IV

Part III of IV: Retrospective Expansion

The past four years have brought remarkable growth, and each album below marks my appreciation of a whole new genre. Two out of four were released in 1979. The Talking Heads also released Fear of Music in 1979.

Peter Gabriel – So
Purchased on sale at HMV (remember when that was a thing?), this album was the grown-up version of my adolescent love for all things 80s. While jammed with his biggest hits, it's not his best – that honour goes to the third self-titled album (including this track), generally just called 3 – but it got me hooked on Peter Gabriel and, soon after, on Kate Bush.

The Slits – Cut

I lived for a summer with four guys in a rambling Wolseley house. Post punk was the soundtrack to gin drinking and Nintendo playing. Gang of Four, Delta 5, The Raincoats, Young Marble Giants, a smattering of concurrent albums by The Fall – a new musical landscape had opened. The Slits were especially beguiling, not only due to the palpable lewd-ness of the whole enterprise (I mean, that band name and that album cover?!), but because they combined the vocal and instrumental chaos of The Raincoats with consistently catchy tunes (and because of the awesome "performance" video above). “So Tough” was the initial standout track, though now I couldn't name one. Ironically, this album was my gateway to more mainstream sonic strangeness: Devo's Are We Not Men?, The B-52s self-titled 1979 (!!) album, and, more recently, Bow Wow Wow's excellent See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! (Yes, that's the album title.) Ari Up was my route to Annabelle Lwin.

The Kinks – Are the Village Green Preservation Society
I read an interview once during which the musician was asked “The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?” and he answered “The Kinks”. Kind of a douchey response, but I'd have to say the same. Given that my acquaintance with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones was primarily through hits compilations, I never could consider myself a committed fan of either. Even after closer listens to Abbey Road, Sargeant Pepper's, The White Album, and so on (Rubber Soul remains a glaring oversight) my most beloved Beatles track is their rendition of “Twist and Shout”! (But seriously, it's flawless.) The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society made a significantly deeper impression on me. I've mentioned my love of “Big Sky” on this blog before, but the whole album is perfection. My touchstone for contemporary chamber pop and British invasion sounds – can't say much more about this classic.

Michael Jackson – Off the Wall
I've always been a Michael Jackson fan, despite the fact that I came of age in the “Earth Song” era during which his performances involved being raised up in glory while the little children came unto him (yikes). “Man in the Mirror”, live clips from the Dangerous tour, and his duet with Janet on “Scream” made strong impressions on me at a young age, but it wasn't until much later that I paid any attention to what was going on between “ABC” and “Thriller”. A fantastic bit of choreography set to the title track was my first real exposure to Off the Wall. It did what really good choreo does: it made all the intricacies of the music visible. And that's some intricate music! Every song on the album delivers, as does all proximate output from The Jacksons (the Destiny and Triumph albums are superb). The impact of this album cannot be overstated. It single-handedly exploded my unthought division between music to dance to and music to listen to. Off the Wall played while I studied, while I rode the bus... everywhere, and a whole whack of soul, Motown and funk followed (Al Green, Earth Wind and Fire, etc.). It's impossible not to consider the racial element of the story: this album radically altered my relationship with “black music”. Funk bass, slow jams, and soul vocals were no longer just “fun” but became, in one important sense, the height of musical accomplishment. The album also marks a return to “polished” studio sounds – Off the Wall isn't Otis Redding Live at the Whiskey a Go Go. Now I listen to hits from Janet and Luther Vandross without any sense of irony. And MJ himself plays on my iPod far more than any other artist!