Pretty Goes with Pretty

Enjoy the Weekend: Fred Astaire

Fred Astaire: "The Carioca"

Enjoy.

My Listening Hours: Looking Forward

What would a hopelessly belabored look back be without a giddy and optimistic look forward? Well, giddy might be too strong a word—looking at the next three months, there’s not a lot that looks totally essential. For me, I’ll be at the record store on a Tuesday for just one release, the New Pornographers’ Challengers. (I know, I know, I can get it now—but as I understand it it’s only as a stream, which is not a convenient format for me; and I’m also fighting my own battle against the need for bands to unleash their b-sides and demos upon the world; I find it unnecessary and often debilitating). The rest look good and I’ll be paying attention to the advance word on all of them. If the time and money is right, they’ll come home with me from Amoeba. What are you looking forward to? Whether I’ve got it listed or not—especially if I don’t—tell me what’s coming down the pike that’s got you camped outside your local record shop come Monday night.

I should say first that there’s one other album I’m eager to hear, and it just came out last week: Tied & Tickled Trio’s Aelita. I’ve been listening to their last album, 2003’s Observing Systems, pretty regularly since it came out—yes, regularly for a full four years. I just never tire of it. Most people paying attention to the German indie scene have been eagerly awaiting the next Notwist album; I am too, sure, but in fact I find this side project to be much more satisfying. You can expect me to go into more detail once I’ve tracked down a copy.

Interpol, Our Love to Admire (7/10)
Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (7/10)
Two veteran bands that are likely to put out records that don’t travel too far afield from there previous albums. I’ve heard one song from Interpol so far and it’s disappointingly too similar to all they’ve done before. Spoon, meanwhile, have been getting all the internet buzz lately and I do love the three albums I have by them. I’ll probably pick this up and I’ll probably like it.

Tegan & Sara, The Con (7/24)
So Jealous turned out to be one of my singalong albums of 2006, so I’m looking forward to hearing their new stuff to see if they’ve continued in that direction. Earlier material from these sisters is largely insufferable, so I am the tiniest bit wary; but So Jealous was such an unequivocal departure that I can’t imagine they’ll regress.

Okkervil River, The Stage Names (8/7)
Never did buy Black Sheep Boy, nor any other albums by these critics’ darlings. I’ve nevertheless accumulated five or six songs without even trying, and I find a couple of them simply outstanding. The rest occupy territory I mined pretty well in the 90s when I bought everything on Drag City. Okkervil River can often sound like the also-rans of that era—Appendix Out, Royal City, Lullaby for the Working Class, early Songs: Ohia, et al. Sometimes a little melodramatic, sometimes a little cliché. But when it’s on it’s great, and it seems like these guys are more than capable of being on. So I’m paying attention.

New Pornographers, Challengers (8/21)
My brilliant wife inexplicably cannot get into the New Pornographers. She tries, because she knows I love them. Occasionally a song from one of their other three albums will come on and she’ll pipe up, “I like this one!” but play two tracks in a row and she starts to get a pained look on her face. I am cautiously optimistic about the fact that she is all over “My Rights vs. Yours.” I am irresponsibly optimistic about the fact that I am all over this song too.

Shout Out Louds, Our Ill Wills (9/11)
I saw the video for their song “Tonight I Have to Leave It” and thought it was okay—not terribly different from the songs on their debut, Howl Howl Gaff Gaff. That turned out to be a pretty fun album, if a touch samey. I’ll keep my ears open for more songs from this album and may plunk down some cash. I got into these guys at the same time I got into the Futureheads and the Kaiser Chiefs, neither of whom were able to replicate the fun of their debuts. Fingers crossed for the Shout Out Louds. At least they're from Northern Europe; they’re drinking the right water (see Peter Bjorn & John, Radio Dept., Jose Gonzalez, Kings of Convenience, Sondre Lerche, et al.)

Kevin Drew, Spirit If… (9/18)
I fucking love the last Broken Social Scene album, way more than it seems a lot of other people do, even. (I for one think it towers over You Forgot it in People.) I also liked Drew’s cameo on The Reminder. Why then am I wary of this album? I have no legitimate reason to be.

Iron & Wine, Shepherd’s Dog (9/25)
Jose Gonzalez, In Our Nature (9/25)
Taken in small doses, Gonzalez’s debut album was a moody gem—it sounds almost like James Taylor covering the entirety of Pink Moon. But too many similar songs in a row made that record too dour for me. I’ll likely only be interested in his next album if he brings some variety to his arrangements and dynamics. As for Sam Beam’s Iron & Wine, I only have his wonderfully spare first album (also a very samey record), which I like. I never got around to picking up his later material so I don’t really know that I’ll get this one either, unless someone comes around and convinces me otherwise.

My Listening Hours: The State of 2007 So Far

No, the albums here are not my tops of the year; they're just what I have to choose from. These are the nine albums made in 2007 that I've so far purchased or acquired, and/or completely processed as albums.

If I were pressed to make a top ten list, I'd stall at four. Here's my ranking:

1. Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha
This one leads the pack, easily, as the most rewarding album of the year.

2. Peter Bjorn & John, Writer's Block
This album has remained in my iPod for a surprisingly long time. When I got a little burned on the record as a whole, the songs kept popping up on random plays and I never skipped 'em. Lately I've come back around to playing the record straight through again and I'm reminded of how layered and thought-out the album  is.

3. Feist, The Reminder
For now this occupies the number three spot. By the end of the year there's a good chance it will still be in the top ten, but I don't know how high. I'm just beginning to burn out the record and am ready to put it aside for awhile. The question by the end of the year will be whether it ever makes its way back into my rotation. Sometimes albums have a way of surprising you the second time around and all the nagging feelings you had just evaporate.

4. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
As I said earlier this week, this is an album that I'm only now realizing is better than I first gave it credit for. As with Feist I don't really know how I'll feel about six months from now. I don't really know how I'll feel about it six weeks from now! Sometimes I embrace the record, sometimes I'm exhausted by it.

The rest? None are truly bad but none are essential, either. The Sea & Cake committs the worst sin - it's boring. While the Shins, Arcade Fire, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah all have their strong points but honestly I haven't consciously chosen to put them on since the last time I wrote about them - a good three months ago.

There are a few albums out now that I still intend to pick up--Battles and Rufus Wainwright, in particular. What about you? What's on your best-so-far list? Have I missed anything totally worthwhile? There was a lot of buzz around Panda Bear and the National, among others, in the last few months. Did you pick them up? Have they remained in your rotation? What has occupied your listening hours? Let me know in the comments.

Meanwhile I'll be looking ahead to the next three months of releases for albums I'm looking forward to. Check back here later today.

My Listening Hours: The Rest of April–June

Yesterday were the new purchases that really took up most my listening hours over the last few months. Today, all my other new purchases that just didn't stick or just plain stunk. When I surveyed "the rest" in January–March, the discs that wound up in this stable were disappointing or decent, but none were actually bad. Looking here, only Bjork really gets credit for making a record I simply wasn't in the mood for; the rest all make me wish I'd spent my money in smarter ways. I could've gone to Disneyland!

Sea & Cake, Everybody
I don't even know why I bought the Sea & Cake record (truthfully? because I found a promo on sale for a couple bucks). I haven't picked up a Sea & Cake album since The Fawn, though I do own (and like) both Sam Prekop solo albums. What I heard of the Sea & Cake in the intervening decade between The Fawn and Everybody was all just dandy; I just didn't feel impelled to buy it. For some ludicrous reason, though, I held out hope that maybe they'd try something new. But alas, no.

And why don't they try something new? John McEntire is an inventive guy. Archer Prewitt is a great songwriter and singer. Why is the Sea & Cake so much Sam Prekop's show? Prekop is fine, but he seems intent on destroying the very idea of variety in his music. So why not let Prewitt sing along every once in a while? Why not let McEntire experiment a little? There is so much potential in the individual members of the Sea & Cake that the fact that this sounds so little removed from—and lesser than—The Fawn is bewildering. Everybody is a bland record full of samey songs. It's pleasant, but that's a euphemism for boring.

Bjork, Volta
Meanwhile Bjork made a record that for the first time (to my ears) sounds like she took a step back rather than forward. I'm glad to hear that she's returned to using instruments, but she seems to have regressed to territory somewhere beyond the edgy pop of Post and sweeping gestures of Homogenic. That's not necessarily a bad thing, nor is Volta a bad album. All I can say is that it ultimately didn't grab me. Could be the album's fault, could be mine. Could be that I can't stop chanting "here's my wersion of this / eternal virlvind" and it's driving me crazy. I just don't seem to have been in the mood for Bjork this year, much as I'd like to be. When the album comes on I'm cool with it, but I haven't been making a point to put it on.

America, Hat Trick
And we come now to the three "blind spots" (today I use the term loosely) I regretted picking up this season. First up is probably the most embarrassing of all, America's third album, Hat Trick. I blame Midlake, of course. When I first fell in love with them back at the tail end of December I read an All Music review that compared that harmonies and 70s-ish sound to America. So I listened to snippets of America on Barnes & Noble's machiavellian listening stations that only allow you the smallest segment of a song at a time. What'd I hear? Harmonies and 70s-ish sound—kinda like Midlake! So more or less at random my wife and I chose this one. Again, trusting the bastards at All Music (it's no accident that B&N lets you read All Music reviews while using their listening stations), Hat Trick was described as "more ambitious but commercially unsuccessful." Sounds like the perfect candidate for an indie-hipster resusitation!

No such luck. Man, what a fucking turd. America is like the aural equivalent of those pictures where you can see two people looking at each other or a chalice. Sometimes they sound like direct descendents of the Byrds—which is great!—but if you turn your head slightly, suddenly all you can hear is a forerunner to the BeeGees—which is abominable!

Don McLean, The Best of Don McLean
We were at Amoeba one evening and my brilliant wife brought this one over to me, nostalgic for her young high school days, when she had this as a dubbed cassette and listened to it all the fucking time. Me, I was ambivalent at best, but more likely not into spending actual money a greatest hit plus nine other songs. I can truthfully say that I have never in my life actively listened to "American Pie." I can't count how many times the song has come on the radio and I have reached for the dial to change it, only to be stopped by my sister, my mother, my friends, my wife—"Hey, what are you doing? It's 'American Pie'!"—and then made to listen to anyone within earshot sing along to every goddamned word of this eight-minute folk epic. I don't hate the song--hate is a strong word, but I really really really don't like it, to quote the teenage geniuses on MTV right now, whatever they're called.

And now here I was, not actively participating as cash left my hand, to be replaced by The Best of Don McLean. I was optimistic though. I do like the folkies from that era, after all. Start singing "Cat's in the Cradle" or "Operator (That's Not the Way it Feels)" and I'm right there with you, singing loud and proud. The good news is that Don McLean's got some songs that fit that ilk. "American Pie" notwithstanding, there are probably three or four very nice songs here, plus two utterly inessential covers and a couple misfire originals. But even at his best, as in "Vincent," McLean lacks the laser-precise lyrics of Paul Simon, the dynamics and distinctive voice of Cat Stevens, or the emotive quality of Jim Croce. Croce in fact is probably the closest in sound, voice, and lyrical depth of McLean—and Croce's just better.

Van Morrison, Astral Weeks
So I can blame Midlake and All Music for America, and my wife for Don McLean—who's to blame for Van Morrison? What is with the critical praise for this album? It's a hot mess. It's a formless, stream-of-consciousness whining buzz of garbled idiocy. The pleasure to be found in this record is so far over my head, scientists are building a satalite to take pictures of it.

Cold War Kids, Robbers & Cowards
My brilliant wife actually had an innate distrust of Van Morrison; we both agreed she should have listened to her gut and barred us from making the purchase. I had a similar mistrust of the Cold War Kids. The only song I knew by them was "Hang Me Out to Dry," which invariably put that song "Possum King" by the Toadies in my head—do ya wanna die? Not a good sign. Yesterday I ate my own words regarding mp3 bloggers since they brought me Andrew Bird, but all I need to do is see the words "Cold War Kids" on screen and I remember all over again why blog hype is rarely to be trusted.

To both our credit, neither my brilliant wife nor I actually purchased this album; it just sort of made it's way into our house like a flu virus. We listened to it a little. There were some songs that were okay but I still couldn't shake a certain smarminess from their sound. Something about their brand of blues rock just didn't sound the least bit genuine. Jack White, for instance, can articulate the aesthetic choices he makes behind his sound; these guys, I'm pretty sure, just want to get laid and paid.

Then a couple of weeks ago we went to see the Little Ones play at the Echo here in Los Angeles. They were opening for the Cold War Kids. By then we'd seen their video for "Hang Me Out to Dry" and grasped that these dudes could care less whether Gorilla vs Bear or Avril4Eva.com is the reason for their success—they just wanna be famous. But we thought, optimistically, that that wasn't a de facto bad thing; that bands aspiring to arena rock levels might be worthy a fucking entertaining club gig. Then they came out, looking like a frat-boy bar band and dancing around like they were the Spin Doctors.

And that was the end of the Cold War Kids. They've officially left my sphere of awareness. They are now in the mythical land of mainstream rock, where curious chimera such as  Hinder and Rocco de Lucca roam the wilderness.

My Listening Hours: The Best of April–June

Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha
Earlier this year I did a couple of posts concerning my pet peeve about most mp3 blogs. It generated a little discussion and I think brought a lot of new readers here. I still stand by all I said—basically that most mp3 blogs spend too much time hyping, not enough time talking about music—but on the other hand, you've got Andrew Bird's latest album. I absolutely would not have picked up this album if it weren't for the mp3 blogs. Bird has been on my radar for a while but I've just never had the incentive to pick up one of his many records. Then "Heretics" started showing up on every last blog I read and that was the end of it. So, chalk one up for the mp3 bloggers: this is my favorite record of the year by a mile.

I wrote a pretty lengthy review of the album not long after I picked it up (where I too included "Heretics," if you're interested). I won't go on about it again, other than to reiterate that Armchair Apocrypha is the best kind of album: it's a grower. My review went on about that facet but here I am two months later and it is still growing on me. I've declared about eight or nine of the twelve tracks to be my absolute very favoritest in that span of time—curently it's "Scythian Empires."

Feist, The Reminder
Maybe it seems a little funny that I'd chalk this one up as one of my favorites, given my nit-picky review, my suggested re-sequencing, and my malaise concerning the very idea of something called Adult Alternative, but the fact is I've devoted so many posts to this record because I've devoted so many listening hours to it.

Of all the albums slated to come out this year, this was the one that I had probably highest expectactions for—higher than the Shins, higher than Arcade Fire, higher than the New Pornographers, higher than everything. So to that end it is, yes, a little disappointing. But it's worst fault is really that it is merely great rather than perfect. I'm to a point now where I think I've finally played it too many times—maybe. I'm tired of many of the more upbeat songs; but now some of the quieter tracks are beginning to reveal themselves to me, in particular "So Sorry," "Honey Honey," and "The Park." It just goes to show that I was right in my first impression that this is a record full of individually strong songs, even if the album as a whole still doesn't quite cohere for me.

Joni Mitchell, Court and Spark
I was a Joni Mitchell virgin. I thought I knew what to expect—that voice, going up high when you kinda wish she wouldn't, at least not so often. And yes, she does that. And yes, she squeezes lyrics in where the meter shouldn't allow it. And no, it doesn't always work. But I'll tell you, I really wasn't prepared for Mitchell's excellent guitar skills. She takes her playing to Nick Drake levels—beyond mere folkiness and into true, subtle musicianship. Not to mention the harmonies, the lyrics (some feel dated, others still sharp). It doesn't always work—some of the later songs get a little too loose, a little too jazzy—but when this album is on, as in the case of "Help Me" or "Free Man in Paris," wow, it's on.

LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
I bought this album back in April and, like their last album, I enjoyed some of the songs but not all. It felt weirdly not for me—I don't dance, I don't work out, I don't really do anything that is best-suited to repetitive booty-shakin' beats. Not to mention another part of me wondered: if I'm going to own a dance record, should it be this one? This seems kid tested and hipster approved—in other words, a little fakey.

But I kept listening to it, mostly on random amongst numerous other albums and rarely straight through—a task I found a little too overwhelming. And while some songs have by now died painful deaths as far as my hard drive goes—the title track and the unfortunate "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down"—the rest of the album has burrowed its way in. The opener is brilliant, and it took me about a month of listening before I realized that three of my favorite songs were actually all parts of the same track, "Us v Them" (I blame my slowness on the fact that all this record's repetition begs you to zone out while you're jamming to it). All the way up until this weekend, as I prepared to write this series of posts, I was expecting to put this album in with the "the rest" (come back tomorrow for those), but on one more casual listen as I sat on the 405, I realized that I have a helluva lot more fun with this album than I ever gave it credit for.

My Listening Hours: April–June

At the end of March I did a series of posts called My Listening Hours, surveying what albums were occupying my iPod for the first three months of the year. Here we are another three months later and I thought I’d take stock once again. So this week you’ll see a series of posts covering the best and the rest—including 2007 releases, filled-in blind spots, and selections from the permanent collection. I’ll also take a look forward to albums coming in the next three months that pique my interest.

Between April and June I picked up ten albums: five were 2007 releases, one from 2006, and the other four were blind spots—albums from previous decades that I feel more musically well-rounded for knowing (whether I like them or not). I wish I could have picked up more; looking back on what I was anticipating last time I did this sort of post, there were thirteen new albums I was excited to hear, and so far I’ve only picked up a small handful. Most of them I probably won’t ever get around to purchasing—sorry, Tarwater—though I remain intent on picking up Battles and Rufus Wainwright. Unfortunately I don’t have the cash or connections to keep up as much as I’d like, nor the time to listen via streams or hunt for leaks.

As I noted in April, 2007 is shaping up to be a better year for music than 2006. By this point last year, I was awash in disappointment after disappointment, and the only two albums I really loved—Belle & Sebastian’s The Life Pursuit and Secret Machines’ Ten Silver Drops—turned out to be the only albums I loved for the entire year. (If only I’d heard Midlake or the Little Ones sooner…) This year I’ve got three contenders for best of the year so far, and those albums that did disappoint were still less disappointing than those of 2006. For whatever that’s worth.

Check back in a couple hours and I’ll have the first installment of the week—the best of April–June.

New Country

This was what I carried with me into new country, an instinctive simplicity, a thoughtless idealism. It was the first time, moving from one place to another, that I hadn't expected something better of the new country than I had found in the old, that I was prepared for disappointment. It was the first time, too, that I was not disappointed.

—Graham Greene, Journey without Maps

Enjoy the Weekend: Jacques Dutronc

Jacques Dutronc, "Les cactus"

Enjoy.

Graham Greene: It's a Battlefield

I’ve been slow to post on It’s a Battlefield, Graham Greene’s third novel. I’ve been finished with it for about a month and am now well into his next, England Made Me. My laziness in writing about it is probably a good indication of how I felt about it. Not bad, but not great, either. The novel is conceptually interesting, but it never congeals into a successful work. Its most dramatic moments feel like rewarmed scenes from his previous novels—the love triangle recalls The Man Within, while the business-as-usual conclusion is similar to that of the far superior Orient Express.

The novel’s central character is Jim Drover, who has been imprisoned for the murder of a policeman during a riot (the policeman was going to strike Drover’s wife). However, Drover never appears in the book—not a single scene. (Interestingly, Norman Sherry’s biography implies that Greene wrote numerous prison scenes but cut them all out.) Instead the book concerns itself with all the characters who are satellites of Drover’s current situation—his brother Conrad, his wife Milly, and her sister Kay; the Assistant Commissioner of police; Conder, a reporter; Mr. Surrogate, a member of the local communist chapter (of which Drover was a member); and a few others.

So, like Orient Express, this is an ensemble novel, no one character taking control. But where that novel was so concise, so gripping, It’s a Battlefield is a muddle. It makes you wonder how Greene was able to keep things so perfectly paced and plotted in Orient Express, how he was able to keep all his characters so well-drawn, when he more or less failed in this same respect here. Perhaps it is because the very nature of Orient Express entwined with a linear progression toward a climax. The train moved forward, and characters could only enter and exit the story when the train stopped. It’s a Battlefield is much looser, more tangential. There are more characters, for one; many are given just a few pages or a single chapter, such as the policeman’s wife. But even those that are more directly tied to Drover’s fate are given a rather democratic number of pages, to the point that much of their dramatic arcs are suppressed. When the promiscuous Kay takes a date with Jules, for instance, the heart behind their engagement is deflated. The chapter is told from Jules’s perspective, an otherwise minor character whom the reader has nothing invested in.

More drama is found in the love triangle between Drover and his wife and brother, Milly and Conrad. The entire relationship reads like The Man Within version 2.0—thankfully a subplot this time around rather than an entire novel. In that book, Andrews was torn between his love for the virtuous (in his eyes) Elizabeth and his father figure, Carlyon, leader of a band of smugglers. Like Drover, Carlyon was largely offstage for most of The Man Within, as Andrews internally wrestled with whether he should love a man who represented so much that Andrews loathed about himself and his childhood—not to mention who he had already betrayed. In truth “love triangle” is not really the correct term—perhaps “allegiance triangle” would be more apt. Similarly, Conrad is drawn to Milly, who he feels is saintlike, yet is torn over his feelings for his brother, who may be sentenced to death or may be given eighteen years in prison. Conrad has always looked up to Jim, and cannot process that what Jim did was actually wrong; yet a part of Conrad wants Jim to die so that he can be with Milly forever.

Ultimately Conrad betrays his brother by consummating his relationship with Milly. But like Andrews in The Man Within, the further Conrad gets, physically, from his love, the less he feels its effects and the more his allegiance to his brother grows. The same can be said for Andrews and Elizabeth in The Man Within;  when Andrews heads for the city he quickly falls into bed with another woman, and when he returns to Elizabeth but is outside her house when the smugglers arrive, cowardice overpowers love. Likewise, in Orient Express, the romance at the novel’s center disintigrates when it is forced apart by physical separation; once Carlton and Coral are separated, Carlton simply goes on with his life.

It’s a Battlefield is full of other themes as well, not least of which is socialism and Communism. This too appeared in Orient Express, in the form of Dr. Czinner. In that novel all of Greene’s thoughts on the matter were expressed directly through Czinner. With It’s a Battlefield (and his next novel, England Made Me), Greene spends more time painting an entire landscape filled with political unrest, whether in the form of actual members of the Communist party in It’s a Battlefield or in allowing the stark class divisions in that book and in England Made Me to speak for themselves. It’s interesting that Greene would come to be known as a “Catholic writer,” for in these early books religion makes scant appearance. According to Norman Sherry’s biography, Greene did join the Communist Party in Great Britain when he was twenty years old. However he paid his dues for just four weeks before lapsing. Obviously Greene had some continued sympathy, or at least fascination, for the workers, though it’s unclear to me whether he was committed in reality or if it was simply a newsworthy issue of the day.

Just Gimme Indie Wha??

Richard Crary pointed me to Charlie Wilmoth’s review of The Reminder over at Dusted, which begins to raise some of the issues I’ve touched on here and in some comments at the Existence Machine. Wilmoth doesn’t so much review Feist’s album as he does use it to talk about some other issues—namely the disappearance of lo-fi recording in indie rock. Gone are the days of Sebadoh and Beat Happening, where whole albums were made from 4-tracks because that’s all these people could afford. These days, if anyone is making an album with that equipment, it’s an aesthetic choice, not a necessity.

Wilmoth’s observation is a good one, though it might have packed more punch in the context of Elliott Smith’s newest, since Smith is arguably the last significant artist to squeeze genius out of a 4-track (and subsequently lose some of his genius once he had every trick at his disposal). I’m not sure why Wilmoth would choose a major-label release by an artist who has never claimed to have roots in lo-fi (in fact Wilmoth admits this slight absurdity his review). His ultimate complaint seems to be that Feist used her major label–quality recording equipment to make a record that is not very challenging—whereas if she were limited by budget and technology, it might have pushed her to make something more visceral. I can’t ride that train all the way to Wilmoth’s destination, however. His wish for Feist to be “more amateur” is ridiculous given that she’s done nothing with her career other than prove that she’s far from amateur—she’s versatile and commanding, both on record and on stage, solo or in support of others.

But Wilmoth’s observation concerning The Reminder’s many smooth corners, and his discomfort with that as he tries to place Feist within a Pitchfork (or Dusted)-approved context, points to a similar idea I’ve been circling for a while now—namely that Feist is trading in what Wilmoth dubs “Adult Alternative.” He writes:

The less obvious effect that technology is having on indie rock is that the punk spirit of so much ’80s and ’90s indie is just about gone from many of the biggest records. You can now buy the Shins’ latest album at Starbucks. And when I hear the Shins, or Death Cab for Cutie, I mostly hear a very beautiful-sounding brand of bougie, thirtysomething myopia. Even when the Shins’ lyrics drip with bitterness, and even when Ben Gibbard sings about his estrangement from the church, the underlying message is that everything is okay, or at least that everything is okay beyond the world of the narrators' personal lives. Their music is perfect, professional, and Starbucks-friendly. As much as I enjoy many aspects of both bands’ music, there is something wrong with this picture.

It may seem absurd to mention Sebadoh’s III in the context of a review of a record like The Reminder, which was released on a major label and features an opener (“So Sorry”) that could easily be mistaken for Norah Jones. And, after all, Leslie Feist has received a huge career boost from NPR. So why not just acknowledge that it’s Adult Alternative fodder and let it be?

Again, I’m not so sure the onset of Adult Alternative is the fault of technology, but nevertheless there does seem to be such a genre, one that didn’t exist five or six years ago but which has quietly come into existence on any thirtysomething indie rocker’s iPod. Feist is far from the only one to occupy this territory. The newest Sea & Cake record, for instance, is so free of rough edges it’s practically dust. KCRW’s celebrated music programming is filled to the gills with underground soft rock. Even my beloved Midlake has garnered their fair share of comparisons to America.

Have we been snookered? How can I read Pitchfork every morning and enjoy an album so palatable my mother-in-law might even like it? How can Pitchfork swoon over that album with an 8.8 rating?

Since Wilmoth uses Sebadoh as his foil to Feist, let’s travel back in time, to the days when indie rock was so fucking new Lou Barlow hadn’t even written a song about it yet. Sebadoh’s first album, The Freed Man, was released in 1989. That same year the Who infamously embarked on their 25th anniversary reunion tour. “What happened to ‘Hope I Die Before I Get Old’?” the baby boomers lamented—not so much because they didn’t want to rock out with their spouses and children to “Pinball Wizard”; they just realized that, like 3/4 of the Who, they did not die before they got old. The irony that the anti-establishment g-g-generation had become the establishment had officially dawned. It’s okay that the spirit of the song no longer makes sense; I just want to hear that song again.

Around the same time, boomers were upgrading their music collections from vinyl to the relatively newfangled format, the CD. They headed to their local Tower with the intention of buying Exile on Main Street, but they came out with the new James Taylor, too. Worse, they didn’t even bother re-buying any Kinks albums; they bought Kenny G instead.

Fast forward to present day. Now that indie rock itself is as old as the Who were in 1989, it is perhaps not surprising that there is such a thing as indie rock for parents—that same combination of mellowing contemporary tastes and a nostalgia for bygone rockers. Even Lou Barlow is in on it: Dinosaur Jr.’s back together. It’s the same disconnect found in our parents' record collections.

Which brings me back around to Feist and Adult Alternative. We’ve been listening to punk, alternative, indie, underground—whatever you want to call it, not mainstream—pretty much our entire lives. Why, now that we are married and are having kids, would we suddenly abandon our innate distrust of mainstream music, even if our tastes are, perhaps inevitably, mellowing? Fuck no I’m not going to buy today’s popular equivalent to Kenny G—but I’m considering buying the new Air. How’s that for a middle finger to the mainstream? Just gimme indie dinner music!

The ultimate question, finally, is this: so what? Wilmoth is onto something when he alludes to a sort of discomfort in acknowledging that the easiness of Feist’s sound is precisely what makes her records so beguiling, all the while reconciling that with your inner teenager, who would sooner punch his head through a wall than sing along with “Brandy Alexander.” But overcoming one’s inner college rock snob is a personal battle. I’m waging mine. How’s yours going?