A Song For Secret Superheroes

And for today we present to you a very charming and likeable song.

'Wake Up Dreaming' is a dreamy, ruggedly optimistic piano ballad about an office suit who doesn't let the dreary boredom of his job in telemarketing destroy his dreams.

Now, if I was a cynical robot who had been swallowed up by the corporate machine (by which this song refuses to be intimidated), then I might be tempted to dismiss this song as just a needle in a haystack of generic pop ballads sung by Phoebe-lookalikes, and give it a hum-drum three stars out of five.

But fortunately, I am not a robot thus enslaved, but a (mere) human determined "to keep believing" -- just like the song would have us do. And so, as a way of saying a loud AMEN to the conviction of this anthem of hope, and because I really do like the superhero cartoons that decorate both the Bandcamp page and the blog of this artist, I'm going to give her FOUR STARS OUT OF FIVE.

And I'm also going to give a public encouragement for you, dear reader, to offer a helping hand by donating some money towards her upcoming album:

A Puritan Endorses Unholy Hip Hop

This is the sort of music that I wasn't allowed to listen to as a kid.

Profane, explicitly violent, totally disillusioned with life -- no, I'm not saying that this is music I should have been allowed to listen to as a kid.

But -- of course -- just because I wasn't allowed to listen to this sort of thing, that didn't mean that I didn't. Not this particular artist, no. But to explicit lyrics rapped with anger-fuelled energy and the cynical conviction borne from experience -- that I listened to. And like every other teenage boy frustrated with the failure of the world to live up to my expectations, I liked it.

And some people -- the sort of people who you would call 'puritanical' -- think you shouldn't like this sort of thing. And here I am, someone who you might even describe as a 'puritan' -- I do in fact believe that the Puritans were for the most part right about the big metaphysical questions of life, the universe, and everything: I believe that there is a God, and I believe that the God-Who-Is-There is a holy God, and I believe that we the great mass of mere humanity therefore need to guard our hearts by setting our minds on whatever is true, noble, right, pure lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy; I even go to a church that would still quote the great Puritan theologians.

But I'm going to give this FOUR STARS OUT OF FIVE. Because this music is ferociously honest, philosophically aware and lyrically skillful. I won't give bore you with detailed exegesis -- because that's not what this blog is for. But here are just two poetical snippets which could trigger a far more honest and insightful theological conversation than more conventional Christian contemporary music:

Something has broken my TV //
It keeps telling me I need to be worshiped //
And followed to fill this void -- //
I don't know who I am.
(From 'Junk')

Maybe we’ll evolve to a point where //
Fear as an experience is no longer instinctual //
But rather an emotion we use to enrich our understanding of //
Why our human ancestors killed each other when they could have loved each other//
One day we’ll be holding hands instead of grudges//
We’ll eliminate our territorial circuits and know what love is//
One day we’ll be holding hands instead of M-16s//
Until then every human being is controlled by the fight
(From 'This Story')

Let me make this clear though -- the honesty of the music (as I perceive it) is in its awareness of the total meaninglessness and misery of this life if indeed it is true that we are randomly evolved creatures in a universe otherwise empty of intelligent life. In fact, if we take into account the whole tragic story of Michael 'Eyedea' Larsen, the rapper of these songs, who died aged 29 due to an accidental drug overdose, the tragedy of the meaninglessness offered by a God-less worldview becomes even more apparent.

But this is where we need to come back to the Puritans. And to the message that tells us that it's not ourselves that we need to worship, but Someone Else, and that in worshipping Him we can know who we ourselves are. And then that knowledge -- and not random evolution -- is the thing which can set us free from the controlling urge to fight and bring us to the point where we are able indeed to love each other.

Review: 'Cotton To Fabric'

Wow.

Generally I'm not a fan of electronic music, in spite of all William's attempts at converting me to his faith, but this is more than just futile techno squibbling.

This is music so compelling that it can lure into an irresistible flourish of swing dancing even that cool cotton-suited character who stands on the cover of the EP looking nonchalantly blank towards any potential listeners.

This is music that not only can but does.

It does so slowly at first, as the tentative opening notes draw him tip-toeing out from the flat image that he so completely inhabits, before persuading him to throw caution to the wind and dance. Delicately at first, then more boisterously -- and at last, out into the streets of Birmingham he goes.



And so the music takes us, through those Brummie streets, all the way even to Teresina (judging by the video that would be the Brazilian municipality rather than the Polish village) until we are brought at last to the climactic confrontation with the mysterious Xavier and the music ends in an apocalyptic flourish.

Five tracks, all wonderful. The maths is therefore simple: FIVE STARS OUT OF FIVE.

And the moral of the story? We all need a Xavier.

Constant like -- sunlight?

Many things in this world are constant. The ratio of the perimeter of a circle to its diameter, for example, is the particular constant known as π. The brilliance of Janelle Monae's music could also be called a constant, albeit in a somewhat looser sense.

Now sunlight is quite obviously not, by any stretch of the imagination, in this category. You need proof? Go stand outside your door and look at the sky. (But mind you don't look straight at the sun or you'll destroy your eyesight). Now remain standing like this for twenty-four hours. And what you will discover (unless you are in Iceland in the middle of the summer, but we can safely assume that the Funky Homosapien known as Del is not in Iceland, and even if he were, we could prove our point by choosing some larger number of hours than twenty-four) is that the sunlight is not constant. Night falls. The sun disappears. Wait long enough and the seasons change. The amount of sunlight that you experience will NOT be constant.

But someone will say, Maybe he's not talking about our subjective experience of sunlight, maybe he's talking about the objectively constant flow of sunlight from the sun towards our funky-homosapien-inhabited planet. Which sounds like a valid defense. But such a defense can be shattered by two simple words: solar flare.

So TWO STARS OUT OF FIVE. Needs to improve his grasp of metaphor. And let's be honest, the "electric juice" which is being looped is a bit repetitive.

Review: 'The Woodlands'

Glockenspiel, some strummed instrument that I secretly hope is a banjo, an occasional violin, and a voice which couldn't be more perfectly fragile and whispery if it were the very ghost of Emily Dickinson herself.

Oh and according to their Myspace bio, they are "a wife and husband indie folk-pop duo". Which was always guaranteed to make me feel a bit warm and fuzzy, myself being a husband with a wife who could be described as "indie folk-pop".

And just to prove that Keats was right about a thing of beauty being a joy forever, they've felt no shame in recycling the material from the original eponymous album into these five fully free electro-tech dance remixes. Because if the ghost of Emily Dickinson wakes you up on a moonlit night, what else can you do but take her to the discotheque?


Myself being not just the husband of an indie folk-pop wife, but also a slightly attention deficit child-of-the-eighties with a fondness for leaping into the air whilst jerking my elbows in an ungainly fashion and calling this dancing, I highly commend these regenerated versions of the songs.

Just don't ask me what the folks who boo-ed Dylan when he went electric would have had to say about this sort of thing... :P

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Oh, wait! You want a score of some sort. Let's see... if Pitchfork could give a score of 8.4 to the Arcade Fire's Neon Bible then the combined package of the Woodlands album + remix EP must be worth a score of at least 8.7/10.

And when you consider that for a mere $5(=£3.12) I could have my very own copy of every single one of these fifteen delightful tracks, it's almost enough to make me up the score to 8.8.

Almost. 8.7/10

Review: 'A Song For Cindi'

Here is a fantastic song, not just a remix of Janelle Monae's Neon Valley Street but the required response to it. (Aside: if you haven't heard Janelle Monae then you need to drop everything that you are doing RIGHT NOW and buy your copy of the Archandroid here)

Now, by the looks of his webpage's opening video, Stef is a backslidden Christian who needs to learn the obvious lesson of Amy Winehouse's tragic demise and STOP TAKING DRUGS. They're bad for you.

But that doesn't change the fact that in this particular song he has written a pretty poem which acts as the perfect counterweight to the unrequited love ("For now, I'll pretend//I'm holding your hand") of Miss Monae's original song. And dare I say it, if there were to be a rap contest between him and Big Boi, then my vote would go with our man here in this corner -- at least on the strength of this song and the weakness of the alleged's Big Boi underwhelming interlude in the otherwise impeccable Tightrope.

Final rating, then, 4 STARS OUT OF 5.

Why not five? Because for all the track's sweetness ("They'll never make another like her in the factory//So i'm hopin' and prayin' maybe someday she'll come back to me//So till she returns and we get to actually speak//I'll replay that day that we met on Neon Valley Street") there is here a significant mistake. Anthony Greendown, the object of Cindi Mayweather's affection, as declared in the opening track of Metropolis: the Chase Suite (Ms. Monae's first release) is most definitely a human. And the narrator of this fine track is apparently not.

So we're pedants. Shoot us.

And enjoy the track.



Soulful, soulful...

(May the song reach your heart...)

I saw this beautiful robot
At the metropolis.
She's got my wires on fire
Nothing's stopping this
She wore a crown
And it wasn't to be trendy
I asked her her name
And she told me it was Cindi

She's a queen
I wanna make her my girl
But she jus kept telling me
She had to save the world
I asked why
And she said that we were slaves
Simply androids living our lives in a daze
She said the great divide
told everybody a lie
She had arrived
To come and open up our eyes
Open up our eyes
But what do we need to see?
That the power resides
In you and me

What?

Now may the song journey on
Until it touches your control
Hope you realise your destiny
Begin to take control
Cuz what energy you're given
Is given not to be sold
Hope you're on the right side to fight
The war is cold

It's so cold
So be sure to get your heaters up
Cuz the time's tickin and be sure to get your metres up
They beat us up and chain our minds with ignorance
We're just machines waiting for scheduled maintenance

Cindi Mayweather you're the queen,
Be forever mine
The archandroid i met you, it was after nine

She came to save Metropolis and bring the better times
The crown's hers, look how she [..?*?..] shine
They'll never make another like her in the factory
So i'm hopin' and prayin' maybe someday she'll come back to me

Till she returns and we get to actually speak
Replay that day that we met on Neon Valley Street
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* If anyone can interpret the blank in the lyrics, then please tell me what Stef is trying to say here.