Mini-Record Review: Unknown Mortal Orchestra (Unknown Mortal Orchestra, 2011)

Portland-based Unknown Mortal Orchestra describe their own music as a “vision of junkshop collector pop.”  The Pitchfork review of the group’s debut LP compares them to Cults and Sleigh Bells.  All three groups are minimalists to some extent, although Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s sonic palette is a bit more expansive than the other two.  To be sure, this record has some engaging, pleasant moments of pop sincerity.  I smile a little bit every time the crunchy lead guitar joins in unison with Ruben Nielson’s vocal.  Indeed, the band has several clever musical tricks up its sleeve.  “How Can You Luv Me” and “Thought Ballune” in particular make for nice little summer ditties.  When I’m looking for cute, lyrically superficial, riff-based pop music, though, I prefer Sleigh Bells’ in-your-face, louder-than-thou aesthetic to Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s unassuming lo-fi stylings.  The band is rarely boring, but I’d love to see them emphasize the dirtier, more aggressive elements of their sound.  The group also describes their music as “alien beatnick pop.”  If that’s the case, these aliens are more intent on pleasant intergalactic dialogue than a full-on invasion.

PopMatters: Ghost World Revisited

In my latest PopMatters article, I revisit Terry Zwigoff's 2001 film Ghost World, one of my favorite movies of all time: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/145647-ghost-world-revisited/

Enjoy :)

Mini-Record Review: House of Balloons (The Weeknd, 2011)

So much music, so little time to write.  New solution: Mini-record reviews!

The most effectively atmospheric, creepily sensual R&B record of the year comes from The Weeknd, an act shrouded in a cloak of anonymity, but recently revealed to be the stage name of twenty-one year-old Toronto resident Abel Tesfaye. This debut effort evokes the feeling of a night on the town gone terribly, terribly wrong. Tesfaye’s expressive, wide-ranging voice gives me faith once again in the power of R&B. The thing that gives this album such zest, though, is the fact that Tesfaye’s soulful vocal is juxtaposed with terrifying lyrics about drug overdoses, dangerous sexual practices, and, when the night’s cloud clears, cold, relentless pain. It would be easy to accuse this record, as some have, of glorifying a relentlessly hedonistic lifestyle, if not for the fact that all the talk about the pleasures of the night are tempered by emotionally naked expressions of the agony of the morning after. House of Balloons succeeds similarly as Destroyer’s Kaputt in invoking a trippy dream state. The Weeknd’s world, though, seems more like a nightmare.

there is a way to go

there’s a party upstairs

or a club

and an indeterminate number

of paranoid visions

dancing through this throbbing head

i ask them to

hold it down

they ask me to

prove my existence

i say

it’s getting harder every day

but i’ll try

i point out

friends who have taken the bus

out of town

only to reappear in fleeting dreams

are they any less real?

is there a difference

between leaving this city

and dying?

they shrug

and resume their noise-making

i make a grocery list

and listen to

the thunder rolling in



By: Jake Adams

Seattle, WA

Seattle, WA


* The tenth (and last) in a series of travelogue poems--poetic structure inspired by Charles Bukowski’s posthumous poem “come on in!”

welcome to this precipitous hill.

the beats blast from every undiscovered corner.

aging hipsters cling to their withered bus passes.

this is where my last poetic line will be

written.

the Americanos stream into each cup

like water through the Pugent

Sound.

we need to find a new truth and a new

direction.

we’re trapped here now

watching the perplexed tourists panting up the

incline.

my heart pounds to the certainties of

caffeinated overdose.

I stand up, walk it off, scratch

my head.

I’m a cup.

I am an overplayed song.

this precipitous hill welcomes you.

please come, but don’t stay too long!

there’s a life for you here,

poseur.

we have no motives to question but our own so

come sit with me at this uncomfortably crowded table.

it’s only two a.m.

here

four in Chicago.


By: Jake Adams

Portland, OR

* The ninth in a series of travelogue poems



Waiting for the rain to settle,

You told me that

We are not in need of stars


A forgone conclusion—


Into the black night

A quiet light glimmers from your eyes


By: Jake Adams

Bay Center, WA

* The eighth in a series of travelogue poems



Competing narratives of happiness fight for my heart,

As I sit upon the crags and sands of time,

Looking across the wide, anxious ocean,

Hoping for some revelation from above or resolution from within,

Instead hearing nothing but the sound

Of these vehement waves crashing against an apathetic shore.


By: Jake Adams