Fan mail!/Updates

This is not a post about the album of the same name from defunt 90s pop r&b queens TLC. Now that that's established, let us begin. I love receiving feedback for my reviews/commentary/etc. I Received a forwarded email from TMT's editor with something completely unexpected: a reaction to my review for Wino's anthology, A Bottle of Pills With a Bullet Chaser. The review was published in January, so I was pretty surprised to see a response letter so after-the-fact. It's certainly far from my best writing, but I am pretty proud of the line about the singer's lyrics, "about as profound as the brooding couplets scrawled into an angst-ridden high school student’s notebook cover." But enough self-congratulating, here's the letter I received:

Your so cool!

I know that's your opinion. The only thing you know of the band is this
cd.

From- WINO.

Glaring grammatical errors aside, I'd like to point out that A Bottle of Pills... is all that anybody (aside from those "lucky" enough to have witnessed the band's live show before their dissolution) could know about this band... it's their entire recorded output. So thank you, dear fan, for assuming the role of band spokesperson and taking the whole of fifteen seconds to share your feelings/embarrass the band you love. Or, if you're actually a former member of the band, you should consider editing yourself.

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I recently began working for the music department at WVFS. I will be writing brief reviews for albums entering rotation, so expect some capsule-style reviews here very soon. Currently reviewing BLK JKS's After Robots, David Bazan's Curse Your Branches, and Why?'s Eskimo Snow.

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Finally, I have a few reviews that I really want to finish, but haven't found time to, yet. A full review of Zoos of Berlin's great new album Taxis is coming soon(ish), but for now, check out this very elaborate track review for "Electrical Way" (not one of my favorite tracks, but a good one no less) and enjoy the song.

Dancing about Architecture

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." The author of the quote is unknown (Elvis Costello and Frank Zappa are among the allegedly responsible), but I think it's a rather provincial proposition. To the average person on the street, I'm sure that a dance about architecture would appear absurd. However, we have used one medium to describe another since the beginning of time, so why not use the written word to express music?
I'm not going to expound on this matter much further, because, as a reader of this blog, you know that I love to write about music. However, I encourage you to check out the 2009 music issue of The Believer, the literary magazine from McSweeney's. As in past issues, the volume contains a mix CD with detailed insights on each track. However, the articles in the 2009 music issue, in my opinion, are far superior to those from the 2008 and 2007 issues (There are more, of course, but I've only been reading The Believer since 2007). I've only read about half of it, but each piece has been compelling and thoroughly researched (the segment on The Lawrence Welk Show was much more interesting than I expected it to be). Arthur Phillips' exposition, "Dancing about Architecture,"[FULL ARTICLE] is illuminating and thought-provoking, my favorite article in the issue so far, and maybe one of the best ruminations on writing-about-music that I've ever read. Pick up a copy Here, read Phillips' piece, and share your thoughts!