http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Fri, 8 Nov 2002 17:51:29 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. 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Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/11/08/175129.php John ScalziOn the Roman Evening page of Bitter Stag Records' Web site, the company's mascot, Buck (a stag who is bitter, perhaps because he's missing his left ear) is presumed to vent about what he hates about music critics: Namely, that they can get through an entire review without mentioning any lyrics from the record they're criticizing. This rant then devolves into a general pasting of popular music and is not especially coherent, but then, what do you want out of a one-eared, stuffed deer. The upshot of the rant is that Buck insists that the bands his company markets should be able to explain their lyrics. What then follows is a track by track take of what each song in Together Now is all about -- what the lyrics mean, the story behind them, so on and so forth.This is a rookie error in my book, since it ignores one of the most crucial dynamics of the music listening experience. Like any artistic thing, an album isn't just about what the artist puts into it, it's also about what the audience takes out of it. Putting out anything creative for public consideration means that the creator has to let go of the idea of what the work "means" since those who consider it will happily heap their own meanings upon it. The degree to which the artist and the audience's decisions on what the work means diverge depends a lot on the work itself, of course. It's a lot easier to peg the meaning of "Whoops... I Did it Again" than Dali's Persistence of Memory, even though Dali tips his hand with the title itself (bear in mind that I recognize that as "artists," the relationship between Dali and Britney (or, more to the point, her songwriters) is akin to the taxonomical relationship between Dali and a sea squirt: They're both chordates, and that's about it). The point here is that much good art, and in this case good music, will intentionally leave space for listeners to pour themselves into. For music like that, nailing the meanings down won't define it, it'll kill it.This is why I'm explicitly not linking to the Roman Evening page of the Bitter Stag Records Web site: I think that Together Now is more than good enough to leave the ambiguities well alone (Sure, I'll tell you what I think the lyrics are about. But that's different). I think this album is tremendous in several places, in fact; a messy, dissolute record that pulls off the stunt of being musically emotionally open while lyrically open to interpretation. The album is like a sad smile from a distant acquaintance: You know enough to know the guy is hurting, but you don't know enough to know just why that is. This mysteriousness is front and center from the first lines of album opener "Let's Take It Back." "I'm so happy we split off / Let's not wait around to see if we reattach," croons singer Adam Klein, in a voice that's wedged somewhere between Neil Young and Tom Petty, while multi-instrumentalist Michael Mullen and guests create the sonic equivalent of pale winter light. The lyrics seem to be a kiss-off to a relationship that doesn't work, but then comes to chorus: "Let's bring it back / Before me and you," it says. And there you have to ask: Why? Take the relationship back before it begins to obliterate the fact it ever existed, or to avoid the things that broke in it the first time around? People never break up easy; they have the urge to fiddle. How you read the song will depend on the severity of your own need to fix things. The only thing sure in the song is a sweet, sad finality (because, after all, you can't really ever take things back). And so it goes. "So Completely" could be a stunning love song, or an admission of relationship boredom. "How Will You Know Me?" is a song of accepting the need to gently surrender into a relationship, or it's a suicide note. Lyrically, Together Now plays to the listener's own world view; the only times the album really doesn't gel is when the lyrics swing toward the concrete, as they do in the cranky "Analyst to the Nation," which takes someone to task for caring too much but not particularly well. I'll be the first to admit it's a little odd to be praising lyrics that are ambiguous, since one avenue of that argument leads up to declaring Duran Duran's Seven and the Ragged Tiger as a lyrical masterpiece. But we don't have to take that road. Anyway, Together Now's lyrics actually make sense -- they track from line to line, which is more than Duran Duran could ever say. What's missing is what listeners add in on their own: Context. It's the space that Together Now leaves for you to pour yourself into. Pour away.Roman Evening: Together Now (Bitter Stag Records) Website | Buy at Bitter Stag Records Music1752@blogcritics.org Fri, 8 Nov 2002 17:51:29 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/10/23/082820.php John ScalziI've got a big fat crush on Jenny Bruce, and it's not just because she's posing on the Soul on Fire album cover in nothing but Christmas lights (although, to be fair, that doesn't hurt). No, my big fat crush is predicated on the following factors:1. Jenny Bruce's voice, which is a warm, thick orange contralto thing, in which Bruce's intelligence moves like a nimble cat in a well-appointed room -- you can hear it work, and you marvel at how effortlessly it gets around. Let's just posit that you don't actually hear singers think all that much; put on a Britney Spears song, for example, and the only thought vibe you get from her voice involves hair products and Pepsi. Bruce's voice, on the other hand, gives the impression that after she's done with her set, she could drop by the table you're sitting at for a chat and you'd still be there six hours later, pissing off the bartender, who just wants go home, because you and she are having one of those monumental conversations that you get maybe once or twice in a lifetime and which make you both think that what you really need to do is run over to the courthouse and get married right now because, even if you win the lottery and suddenly grow back the hair on your bald spot, it just won't get any better than this one conversation. I mean, sure, Jenny Bruce could be an idiot (and, alternately, Britney Spears could make Stephen Hawking look like a failure at addition). But in both cases, I really don't think so.2. Jenny Bruce's lyrics -- not just the words, which justify the assumption of intelligence intimated in her voice, but the pacing thereof (a minor detail that many lyric-oriented songwriters rather unfortunately forget). These are sure-footed lyrics, confidently placed in their musical context, and telling their stories by phrasing just as much as the words. Bruce knows what she's saying and she knows how to say it -- another reason to expect that she gives good conversation, or would be a fine actor.3. Jenny Bruce's songs, which (as you can probably guess from the rather embarrassingly gooshy lead-up) are groovy, grown-up slices of life. Bruce inhabits that folky sphere of things that is also populated by the likes of Shawn Colvin and Suzanne Vega and Paula Cole, but she sets up her camp far enough away from any of them that you can't easily trace a path from one to the other. The closest possible influence I could find would be Aimee Mann, whose knack for phrasing hovers benevolently over the elegant "Blue Angel," and one's hard-pressed to say this is a bad thing. Otherwise, Bruce strides along, doing her own thing, from "Soul on Fire," the album-opening, bouncy encapsulation of Bruce's musical style, to the elegy of "St. Cloud" (which Bruce pronounces, French-like, as "san clu"), which reminds you of how you wish you could remember all of your memories: In that gentle, wistful way that validates your past and affirms your present all in one graceful sweep. In the real world, one or the other of those is usually terminally screwed-up -- which, of course, makes "St. Cloud" even more effective. 4. Jenny Bruce's one major screw-up. One song on Soul of Fire falls flat on its ass: The just-now-anachronistic and way-too-clever "Heaven.com," which finds its subjects "surfing for life on a digital stream." My wife, who does not have a crush on Jenny Bruce (so far as I know) reacted rather pungently by ejecting the disc, saying, "aw, shut the f--k up," and tossing the CD fairly violently back into the pile of discs on my desk. My wife has little tolerance for anything dotcom, so it's less about Jenny Bruce than her song subject. However, even I, dorkmaster supreme, found it to be a bit much. Which pleases me to no end: Being able to identify one major screw-up on the album means that I haven't entirely abandoned my critical faculties just because I think Jenny Bruce is, like, cool and smart and pretty and nice. Which just makes me like her more. Help me. What I'm saying is: You can trust this review, even though I'm acting like an ass in it. Even factoring in my sad little crush, Soul on Fire is an excellent effort, well worth seeking out -- really good music from a really interesting artist. And, she's dressed in Christmas lights! Hey, it doesn't hurt. Music1465@blogcritics.org Wed, 23 Oct 2002 08:28:20 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/10/01/101011.php John ScalziHere's an interesting question for you: Considering that the music industry essentially dictates the shape of the youth culture, how can it be so thickheadedly clueless about talking to teens about file sharing? The latest music industry salvo in this direction is a Web site called MusicUnited.org, which is designed to bring home the point that nearly all file sharing is illegal and wrong. Let's take a moment and discuss all the ways that this site is going to fail miserably.1. It's not a cool site. It's not cool in its intent, of course, since its intent is to keep kids from doing something they want to do, which is to share files with each other. But you can get past that if you can get your message across. The site totally screws this up right from the beginning: One of the headlines on the front page says of file sharing: "It's illegal and it's a drag!" A drag? I mean, good Lord. I'm 33 and I winced when I saw that. It immediately calls to mind your junior high health teacher trying to use hep slang to tell you about why drugs are bad. The worst thing an adult can ever do when speaking to "the kids" is try to use current slang and fail (the second worse thing is to use it and use it correctly, and yet still sound like you have no clue). The site immediately sets itself up to be mocked purely on the basis of how it presents its message, which means the message won't even get considered. 2. The site threatens. Despite the nice (but too conservatively-designed) graphic design, the textual tone of the site is one of distinct and total menace. Every bit of text reinforces ominously that file sharing is illegal (and wrong), and that there are severe penalties if you're caught: The site's favorite bit of trivia in this respect is the maximum penalty for copyright violations, which is five years in the stony lonesome and a $250,000 fine. "Don't you have a better way to spend five years and $250,000?" asks the site.Please. The minute the music industry actually ever pressed for the maximum sentence for copyright violations to be imposed on an actual teenager is the minute the shit really hits the fan. No one in their right mind believes that the penalty for a college student downloading the White Stripes album from Kazaa should be half a decade of prison rape and being traded in the exercise yard for a carton of Kools. If the RIAA actually pressed for this for a single casual downloader of music, the backlash of public opinion would destroy the music industry. They know it, and more importantly the kids know it, too. Waving around a big threat stick when you have no ability to use it makes you look sad, desperate and weak, which is certainly no way to get a teenager to listen to you. 3. The site romanticizes file-sharing. The music industry is using the same style of rhetoric against file-sharing as responsible adults used against drug use in the 60s and 70s, during which time, you'll recall, the kids made drug use pretty much the cornerstone of youth culture. Because anything that really pisses off the grownups is worth doing more than once. Now, this is not going to be an exact analogy, and thank God for that, since the last thing the world needs is a Cheech & Chong-like pair of wacky file sharers making movies about ripping off the music industry. But it's good enough, and is certainly more than enough to make the kids feel that by downloading Vanessa Carelton, they're striking a blow against the Man, or whatever it is the kids are calling "the Man" these days. The site additionally compromises its position by featuring an area that details the civil and criminal penalties parents can face when teens download files, thereby informing the kids that here is yet another way that they can get back at their parents for having birthed them and forcing them to grow up in suburbia. Good move.4. The site picks the wrong musicians to plead its case. On the site and in a newspaper ad that runs today, the music industry hauled out the stars to make its point, featuring quotes by Britney Spears, Nelly, Dixie Chicks and (wait for it) Luciano Pavarotti. This is supposed to reflect the depth of diversity of the musicians want you not to share files. The problem is, each of these artists is a multi-platinum artist whose net worth is in the millions. Britney Spears is worth over $100 million personally, as she noted recently in a People interview. The kids are not going to be sympathetic to a bunch of millionaires complaining they money is being taken from them. I know this because I'm not sympathetic to them. The sort of musicians who should be highlighted in a campaign like this are the ones who actually will get hurt by file sharing: New musicians, musicians with smaller followings, musicians who aren't already millionaires. The Web site features a couple of these, hidden so far down that their quotes are buried. But you tell me, which of these quotes is more compelling to you?"Would you go into a CD store and steal a CD? It's the same thing, people going into the computers and logging on and stealing our music. It's the exact same thing, so why do it?" -- Britney Spearsor"I live with my drummer and guitarist and we have no money. Our survival is based solely on the purchase of our music. Music is not free. Even the street performer gets a dime in his box." -- James Grundler, Singer/Songwriter, Member of Paloalto. Personally, I think the "Dude, I'd like to eat" line from a struggling musician carries rather a bit more moral weight than the "Golly, it's like stealing from a CD store!" line from a 20-year-old woman who has more money than she can reasonably expect to spend in a lifetime. If nothing else, the kids who want to be musicians will feel closer to the situation of the guy in Paloalto than to Britney. The final problem, however, is one that the music industry made for itself, which is widely-held perception that music is both absurdly expensive and that the vast majority of the money that gets paid for a CD goes to everyone but the people who actually make the music. The reason for the perception is that it's true. Why should a kid believe that $18 is a fair price for a CD when he or she can burn one at home for about 50 cents? The economics of record contracts are now common knowledge as well, and when a kid realizes that his or her favorite band can sell millions of CDs and still be in the hole to the record company, there hardly seems to be an incentive to support a system that appears to screw the people who make the music. The site notes that making an album these days can cost $1 million or more, but this doesn't argue against pirating music, it argues against spending so damn much to make a record. I review indie albums every week on my IndieCrit site, and the sound quality of a sizable percentage of those recordings rivals anything you'll hear from a major label. I can guarantee you those indie artists aren't spending a million making their CDs. They're also not to blame for creating a system of promoting music that requires an outlay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get music added to the playlists of ever-more consolidated radio stations, which play ever-safer music. I'm not suggesting the kids are striking a blow for artists rights by boycotting the unfair system. That'd be a little much. Most of them just like not having to pay for the music. It's more that they can spend on video games. But it wouldn't hurt if the music industry wasn't perceived as a bloated, vaguely vampiric entity that appears to survive by sucking the life force out of the people who make the music that kids respond to. If I were the music industry, I'd scrap the MusicUnited.org site and try for something that starts with the assumption that the kids aren't the enemy and have to be threatened, but are actually reasonably intelligent people who might be persuaded to spend money to support their favorite musicians if it could be intelligently explained to them why this is actually a good thing to do. In the meantime, the site is the music industry equivalent of "Just Say No" -- The right message, perhaps, but the utterly wrong way to say it. Music1004@blogcritics.org Tue, 1 Oct 2002 10:10:11 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/09/20/111121.php John ScalziGramophone is the band you want to have playing the very first time you have sex with the person who you already know is going to break your heart. Dark, seductive and doomed, Gramophone unrolls the rhythm of the damned -- one person damned because they want to care more than is really smart to do, and the other person damned because they couldn't care less about the fact they're going to crush someone else's spirit under their boot and just keep going. Here's the question: Which of the damned would you prefer to be? Think carefully. There's a different sort of Hell waiting for you depending on your answer. No matter what, though, Hell is on the way, borne on the voice of an angel.That angel being Penny McConnell, who, by the lyrics, has chosen to be the crusher rather than the crushee. Sliding her tone from understated Harriet Wheeler to medicated Bjork, McConnell chronicles one romantic disaster after the next, though she does so advertising up front that she's just bad news all the way around. "If I were you I think I'd let me go," she advises some poor bastard in "Lonely Machine." Not that he listens. Not that they ever listen. It takes two to tumble into the barbed wire pit. At least McConnell makes it a lovely tumble -- she projects "all screwed up" in that languid way that men sense as a challenge: Sure, she's chewed up and spit out every other guy that's come within a 30-yard radius of her, but I can handle her. Hope springs eternal. Guys, here's a tip: When some woman sings "Cigarettes on linoleum/ I walk barefoot on the butts," as McConnell does in the deceptively sprightly "Brighton Rocks," don't walk away. Run as fast as your deluded little feet will carry you. Of course, what do I know. Fine, go ahead. Mazel tov, kids. Try not to splatter too much when you finally leap off the cliff.McConnell's bruised angel act is surrounded by the perfect lush darkness: Real strings swelling in the dusky mid-range rather than the sweet high end, canned, scratchy drumbeats, and guitars that tastefully feedback at all the right places. David Picking and Jon Colton, Gramophone's instrumentalists, have certainly done their homework; there's very little misstep here. Fast beats are not the order of the day (The Garbage-y "Fill" is as fast as it goes, and that's merely an aggressive mid-tempo), but there's more than enough drama already. "I give you hope, but you could be replaced," McConnell sings in the cheerfully titled "Dead Girls Don't Say No." That's about as cheerful as you're going to get on Gramophone, or get from Gramophone. I really like this album and I think there's a certain subset of people who will really like it, too, the sort of people who have self-inflicted cigarette burns on their psyche (and those who don't, but like to pretend they do, from time to time). But remember: If any part of this album reminds you of a relationship you're currently in, start saving now for therapy. Don't bother with the couples counseling. It's already too late for that. ---Review by John ScalziPurchase this album at CDBabyThis review originally appeared at IndieCrit.com -- reviews of alternative music. Music701@blogcritics.org Fri, 20 Sep 2002 11:11:21 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/09/06/135320.php John ScalziThe new Rolling Stone came yesterday, and by "new" I mean that it's apparently the first one under new managing editor Ed Needham, famously brought in from the land of "lad magazines" to keep the magazine from dying of ossification. In theory, this sounded like a radical but not unwelcome step. I had bought my most recent Rolling Stone subscription primarily because one of those pathetic "I'm working my way through college" dudes came to my door scraping for pennies and I was mildly impressed that he had dragged his ass out to the cornfield-laden country road I live on. Even as I threw the guy a bone I knew I wouldn't actually read much of what was inside the magazine. The magazine didn't much speak to me, anymore. This was bad for Rolling Stone, since as a 33-year-old music critic, you'd think I was a prime demographic. So any change is good -- in theory. In practice, however, I wasn't optimistic. The last time Rolling Stone made a big deal about changing with the times was in the early 90s. I remember that the first cover of that new regime, the one that would show that the editorial brain trust of the magazine was hip to the kids, featured the Spin Doctors, the Archies of stoner jam music. They disappeared under the waves faster than you could say "Edie Brickell." I don't recall the magazine making a big deal about their new editorial direction after that, especially since the kids went in the Nine Inch Nails direction shortly afterwards and never looked back.Needham's Rolling Stone chooses the Vines to represent its new direction and the new new wave of rock music that also includes the Strokes, the Hives and the White Stripes. I'm enthusiastic about the new new wave, if only because it's about friggin' time all the Korn and Limp Bizkit wannabe miserable bastards are well and truly consigned to the dustbin of musical history, but it's also the case that this cover is about four months too late in terms of hipness and freshness. I chalk it up to being a mission statement, however, and as far as mission statements go, it's a better one than the Spin Doctors were. It establishes that someone at RS is actually trying to figure out where music is going rather than trying to push the music they can understand without pain.The insides are a mess. The pumped up front section, which features "Random Notes" and other short bits, is well done -- it passes the "Athena" test, which is whether or not I can read, comprehend and enjoy the information in the few seconds I have between my 3-year-old daughter's interrogative outbursts (other people have similar tests, based on college roommates, bosses peering over cubicles, needing to look at road, and so on). The feature articles, however, well and truly stink. The cover story appears to be about the love story between the Vines lead singer and his bong, and the piece about people paying to be kidnapped and humiliated is indeed humiliating, though not in that good edgy way RS must have hoped. Either Needham is tone-deaf on material longer than 300 words, or he's intentionally choosing bad longer pieces as way to eventually justify axing them altogether. There's nothing on politics, other than how it relates to music, which is fine; you can get a Mother Jones subscription for something like $10, which should take care of anyone's long-format political needs handily enough. The one thing that tips the new RS design into the "plus" column in my book is the extended reviews section. The magazine touts 101 reviews, which as far as I can tell is up about 70 from the previous issue. This is an excellent thing. Jann Wenner likes to work under the delusion that RS isn't just about music, it's about life and culture and whatever, but the fact is, it's a music magazine with extra bits thrown in. More than anything else, RS is a utility magazine, its utility being that it tells you about music you may like, or at the very least you can flaunt in front of your less musically-engaged pals (note that this above statement works only for those 35 and older; for an equivalent statement for younger people, replace RS with CMJ New Music magazine). Whenever RS forgets that fact, it loses traction and flails, and runs frequent cover stories on things like Smallville and Cameron Diaz. So very wrong. 100 reviews an issue might strike some people as excessive, although Blender claims hundreds more each issue, so by that hyperactive standard, RS looks positively phlegmatic. I think it's a fine number, and a nice point to manage the balance between quantity and quality. Most of those reviews will have to be short, but speaking as a professional music critic, trust me on this: For most CDs, 100 words is more than enough. Besides, for most people who like music, a music review is a starting point, not a purchase point. I've filed away a few new names out of the RS review section to look up later; that's a few new names I might have missed otherwise. That's useful to me -- it justifies my subscription rate. As for the rest of RS, I hope Needham figures out the formula for the long features, but I don't really expect he will (it's not why he was brought in) and I don't know that it's material anyway. Once Wenner decides that RS needs to get "serious" again (i.e., sometime after ad pages, circulation and "buzz" are up), he'll bring in someone to handle that, and Needham will either adapt or leave. In the meantime, I think I'll probably enjoy the new Rolling Stone for what it is: About music, again. Which is what it should have been about all the time. ----John Scalzi is a professional music critic from time to time. See his reviews of independent music at www.indiecrit.com. Culture451@blogcritics.org Fri, 6 Sep 2002 13:53:20 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/08/23/120727.php John ScalziHi there. In a brazen attempt to help you wean from the teat of corporate music, I present you with the IndieCrit IndieMix, a streaming audio music program that highlights some of the best new independent music and musicians, originally recorded for my IndieCrit.com site, but now presented by the fine, fine folks at BlogCritics.com. It's a fairly short program (22 minutes) but in that time you'll get six songs from six indie artists, each well worth the listen. If you like what you hear, follow the links below to the artists' Web sites, and to buy their CDs. You'll be supporting the cause of new, good music (and subsidizing these musicians' next cup of joe while you're at it). Enjoy! Click Here for the IndieMix! (64k streaming RealAudio. Need the player? Click here). INDIEMIX ARTISTS: Artist: Shelby Song Featured: "Home" Album: Songs 8 Website | Buy on CDBaby Artist: Mark Gallo and the Witness Song Featured: "One Day" Album: Mark Gallo and the Witness EP Website | Buy on CDStreet Artist: The Santiago Steps Song Featured: "Parrots in Orange Trees" Album: A-Flutter Website | Buy on CDBaby Artist: Johnny High Ground Song Featured: "Bad Girl" Album: Cheaper Than Skydiving EP Website Artist: Marc Teamaker Song Featured: "Sunday's Coming On" Album: Empress Polecat Website | Buy on CDBaby Artist: Jenny Bruce Song Featured: "Soul on Fire" Album: Soul on Fire Website | Buy on CDBaby --- For more independent music reviews, visit IndieCrit.com 207@blogcritics.org Fri, 23 Aug 2002 12:07:27 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/08/22/234305.php John ScalziThe Santiago Steps hail from Orange County, California, which is stereotypically home of everything that is unholy about the Golden State: Mindless upper-class consumer culture, Disneyland, Bob Dornan, No Doubt. The Santiago Steps are not unholy, but there's no question, listening to some of the undeniably odd tracks to be found in A-flutter, that living in a sun-bright plastic world has given their collective brain something of a twist. In this case, the question is, in which direction is the twist going?Take "No More Clones." "I don't want a new mom, I want the one I know," singer Carolyn Davidson complains, sweetly. "No more clones, please." A complaint about a culture in which wives and mothers are interchangeable and to be replaced when they start to wrinkle and leather? Or simply a repurposed college-era science fiction short story? Geeks or satirists? Nerds or social commentators?Actually there's no reason they can't be both. Carolyn Davidson freely admits her geeky leanings: "I'm your nerd rock girl," she trills in the aptly named "Nerd Rock Girl," trying to keep the attention of a faithless boy pining for that popular girl by noting (all-too-correctly) "she will never leave the biker for you." Just what every boy wants: A girl who knows her place in your affections, and uses it passively-aggressively to keep you around. So alluring. So scary. But at the same time, The Santiago Steps recount suburban scenes that most of us who lived there at one point or another have had. "The Frisbee Slide," perfectly observes suburban kids doing a truly stupid thing for no good reason -- in this case, launching themselves down the street on a Frisbee set on the ground. These experiments in inertia end badly, of course, with a litany of snapped wrists and munched BMX wheel spokes, but before that bad end comes the moment of grace: "for that second when you were sliding/ Their voices blurred and your face disappeared/ And for that second man you weren't hiding/ The world was aching no pretending at all." If you ask the kid with the snapped wrist, he probably would have told you that moment made it worth it.The Santiago Steps find a lot of these moments of grace, dusty diamonds they find in the suburban rain gutters, and they're sufficiently socially maladapted to be curious enough to reach down and pick them out. "Parrots in Orange Trees" is in its entirety a paean to one of those moments, a refutation of bad vibes, brought on by a randomly plucked citrus fruit. The Santiago Steps are smart to know these moments don't last (nor do they think they're universally accessible, as the creepy downer track "Two of Me" goes to show), but also smart to know to treasure them for what they are. Even in a plastic paradise, you can be genuinely happy, from time to time.A-flutter, as an album, is kind of a messy composition -- aside these moments of grace are a few too many aimless tracks (two versions of the pointless instrumental "Diorama," plus the ska-soaked jam "So. Street Riot," which sounds like a Plimsouls soundcheck with a random saxophonist that stepped off the street). And production-wise, the album's a bit sloppy and unrehearsed, as if the band could only pay for one run-through per song. But here's a thought from the wistful and surprisingly beautiful album closer "Wake": "There are prices you can learn to love to pay." For a certain class of suburbanites, current or former (and for all geeks), A-flutter is going to wake up parts of your brain you thought you'd shut down for good. That's worth a certain percentage of filler. There's also the fact that on CDBaby, the album's currently selling for $5. Interesting at twice the price, A-flutter's a steal for this amount. ----The Santiago Steps: A-Flutter Santiago Steps Website | Buy on CDBaby.com---This review originally appeared on IndieCrit.com -- Independent Reviews of Independent Music Music: Alternative Rock200@blogcritics.org Thu, 22 Aug 2002 23:43:05 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/08/12/140907.php John ScalziHere's the way I think it works most of the time. One day, you figure out what it is that you really want to do, whether it's woodworking, funneling ill-gotten gains into offshore accounts, or making music. And that night, while you sleep, God comes down, sits on your head and talks to you in a dream you're not going to remember the next day. And God says, you have a choice. You can either be famous for what you do or extraordinarily good at what you do. Choose. And you say, well, why can't I be both? And God says, because no one likes a showoff.And this seems to make perfect sense, because, after all, Van Gogh only sold one painting while he was alive, while Boris Vallejo has become a millionaire airbrushing pneumatic chicks into metal bikinis. So you make your choice and then you wake up and your subconscious remembers what you said to God, and your life starts bending in that direction.(The irony is that God doesn't actually hold you to your decision. The Big Guy actually seems to believe in that whole "free will" thing; he just likes to see if you do, too. This is why on occasion the talented become famous, and even rarer occasions the fame-seeking grow some talent. But I think most of us just figure the deal is settled.)It's pretty clear where Todd Dorman came down on the "fame vs. talent" conversation with God, because Dorman's (the man and the band, which share the same name) When I Come to You is packed in with the seemingly effortless Neil Finn - Peter Case genre of intelligent songcraft that makes other songwriters fume with envy. Musicians grind out entire careers without dropping a single song of the sort that Dorman seems to toss off in bulk here. He's the Sam's Club of thoughtful pop.When I Come to You ups the ante by also being spiritual pop -- Jesus shows up to chat in one song ("Won't You Mercy Me") and is brought up in conversation in several others. For unbelievers and the religiously slack (and I count myself in that number), Jesus' special guest appearances in pop music aren't always a welcome thing. But Dorman's not particularly interested in popping Him up on the Crucifix and then waving Him around like a special effect or a bludgeon. Dorman engages his faith and enters into a dialogue with it; it's belief with a brain. The previously mentioned songwriting talent doesn't hurt, either.Dorman is particularly adept at crystallizing moments in song. "A Last Night," focuses in on the final moments of a relationship that a lover has to will himself to destroy; "Wrecking Ball," uses the destruction of a house as a springboard to examine a life; the previously mentioned "Won't You Mercy Me," expands on a moment of forgiveness. Probably the most poignant moment on the album is in "When the Day is Done," written in the aftermath of 9/11. In the song, Dorman takes cab to a church to pray and the cabbie talks about his son named Mohammed, who "has a nametag he's afraid to put on." The specific moment illuminates the chaos of the day. It's a neat trick. It's not all pop perfection. Dorman, who has a literary bent (he's got an MFA from Columbia) can get a little too clever for his own good. In "Minotaur" he packs in more mythic references than the song can comfortably contain; Dorman himself cops a plea to overdoing it (but then doesn't bother to stop). By and large, however, When I Come to You hits what it wants to hit.Now we get to see whether Dorman and his crew (Sean Dolan on drums, Thane Sheetz on bass, and Elise Kuder on violin -- which plays the part normally handled by electric guitar rather effectively) can exercise free will and swing the fame thing to go with the talent. That's going to be the tough part; notwithstanding that dreamtime conversation with God, the problem with making great Neil Finn - Peter Case pop confections is that the kids aren't exactly screaming for the next Neil Finn or Peter Case CD. Stupid kids.(For more reviews of independent music, visit www.indiecrit.com). Music1@blogcritics.org Mon, 12 Aug 2002 14:09:07 EDT