Tin Speaker

Very Short Album Reviews I

hornblower — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 18:01:33 +0000

Local Natives - Hummingbird : Lovelier, less continuously propulsive than Gorilla Manor.

Indians - Somewhere Else : Delicate; it grows.

Dro Carey - Tussin Underwater : Dark beatz; some are suitable for rapping.

Davwuh - Hong Kong : Mysteries of a nighttime city; seductive neon.

Return of Music Talk

hornblower — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 17:01:55 +0000

So it’s been a while since the glory days of Tin Speaker. That’s okay, though, because darkest hour comes right before the dawn (Bob Dylan, Harvey Dent, Thomas Fuller). So I’m just going to talk a little bit about the music I’m listening to. And prepositions I’m ending sentences with.

Procrastihontas - Mass Produced EP From her bandcamp: “Sad and soft acoustic songs about being let down by the world around you. Slow late night strums and resonant notes.” Sounds about right. It works for the same reason most solo acts work — a compelling voice and an understanding of how to write music that complements it. I suggest smoking a joint and listening to this in the tub. Actually I’d suggest doing that for any good music. Why have I never done that?

TNGHT - TNGHT Collaboration between Hudson Mohawke and Lunice. I don’t really listen to either of those artists but this EP if full of bangers (not that kind). Many opportunities to shout “OHHHHH!”

Simone White - Silver Silver She’s been around for a few years now, but I’ll confess to not hearing her music (as far as I know) until this week. Inventive arrangements, soft but compelling vocals, eminently listenable but never facile.

The Hornblower Guide to Walking in New York City

hornblower — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 07:08:09 +0000

Many people are afraid that when they come to New York City they will be identified as tourists immediately by the way they walk. This is pretty much true. Unfortunately, most people’s response to this apprehension is not the sensible one, which would be to walk more like a New Yorker and less like a little meatball that just sprouted legs and learned how to propel itself for the first time in the history of meatball. Instead, they resort to exaggerating their puffy, rotund, flyover-state walks, so that for certain stretches of Broadway the fastest way down the street may well be crowd-surfing. But it does not have to be that way. If everyone simply followed the Hornblower Essential Tips for the New York City Pedestrian, the streets of New York would be alleviated of much of their congestion and people would spend less time walking places, giving them more time to work on productive projects like jellyfish pictures and chillwave EPs.

Keep Moving This is the golden rule, far more important than any other, and for good reason. New Yorkers do not stop, do not question where they are going and do not slow down and debate which way to go while they’re approaching an intersection with a WALK sign. If you need to check your iPhone to make sure you’re heading in the right direction, do what everyone else does and duck into a Starbucks or, better yet, a phonebooth. You’ll be out of everyone’s way, and once you rejoin the flow you’ll know exactly where you’re going, giving you the confidence to keep up with the swarm.

If You Can’t Walk Faster, at Least Walk Smarter Contrary to popular fear, fast walkers are generally not opposed to slow walkers on principle; rather, their loathing comes from those instances in which a subpar walker slows a New Yorker down. In these cases the New Yorker may release pent-up frustrations with slow walkers in the past whom he had been lucky to avoid. The unfortunate offending tourist suffers not just for his own sins, but for those of his forebears as well.

Walk Two-Abreast; Three, Max One of the most common ways out-of-towners commit these transgressions is by walking along together with the whole group side-by-side across the whole goddamn sidewalk. Now, one meanderer, two, usually even three is no problem, just scoot around the right side at the next gap in the scaffolding. But you get up to four, five, six people strolling along like Dorothy and friends, and then you get the front lines of Kim Jong Un’s army coming from the other side, it gets harder and harder to wind and sprint yourself through the crush and to your destination.

Umbrella Etiquette Rules about umbrellas are often contentious, contended and controversial. Most agree that the size of the umbrella should be strictly proportional to the size of the person or persons it covers. It should be held straight up, with the holding arm kept tight to the body, unless there is such a wind that the whole block has initiated an incredibly synched and precise universal lean, in which case the chief duty is to the lean. There has been no real progress in the etiquette of the umbrella raise-or-lower. Certain camps claim that while passing each on the other’s left (as in roads in the United States), the taller pedestrian should raise his umbrella, while the shorter of the two kind of tried to squat down a little, or at least pretend to do so that the tall one didn’t feel like he was doing all the work. Others claim that that method is just worthless bullshit and that the authors just sit around sucking each other’s dicks all day.

Bicycles Are you kidding me? Unless you’re Lance Armstrong or Pee-Wee Herman, don’t ride one. Not even if you live in an enlightened, bike-friendly European city like Amsterdam or Copenhagen. You’ll probably get killed if you ride like you’re in Northern Europe.

Cars Why are we even talking about cars? I thought this was a column about walking? This is a much worse decision than bikes, unless you are using them strictly to get out of the city. Driving a car in the city is annoying enough for New Yorkers, and we know where everything is. Chasing down landmarks makes it easy to miss what you’re going through to get there. Opt to take a city bus instead and get a glimpse into the actual transportation experience of the average New Yorker. And you don’t have to worry about getting gas, getting hit, or getting a ticket.

The Surowieckipedia – Rough times

hornblower — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 21:12:02 +0000

James wasn’t always the alpha male he would become. After an early growth spurt in elementary school, the rest of the school caught up to him, and by the eighth grade he was shorter than most of his classmates — including Little Petey, who was now going by the name Angry Pete aka Gorilla Man aka Wolf Murderson aka The White Gobstopper aka Hurt Bodiez. The evening of the eighth grade dinner dance, Angry Pete and his band of ne’er-do-wells accosted James and his date Young Susie outside of the gymnasium.

- AYO IT’S ME ANGRY PETE, Y’ALL!

- Hello Angry Pete, how do you do?

- NOT TOO GOOD, I GOT VIENNA SAUSAGES IN MY EARS AND NOSTRILS!

- I’m sorry, Angry Pete, I don’t see any …

- CALL ME HURT BODIEZ!

- Sorry, Hurt Bodies, I …

- WITH A Z, FOOL!

- Listen, Hurt Bodiez, I don’t …

- THAT’S BETTER! HA, HA!

- I don’t really know what you want from me.

- I WANT YOUR GIRL, JIMMY! YOUNG SUSIE IS GONNA BE MY DATE TONIGHT! YOU CAN HAVE THESE VIENNA SAUSAGES THO DAWG!

- What? Now, listen, I don’t think … that’s not something …

- You know what, James, it’s actually okay.

Young Susie took off her begonia corsage and gave it to James.

- I’d actually rather go with Hurt Bodiez. I thought it was pretty mean what you did to him back in elementary school, and I feel like you haven’t really grown up. And also your wiener is pretty small. I can tell.

- But, Young Susie! We were to be a spectacle upon the dance floor! I got my hat blocked!

- I’m sorry, James. Maybe if you hadn’t insisted on wearing those checked pants, things could have been different between us.

At that moment, James felt worse than he had ever felt before, except for the time when he was caught peeing in his fifth-grade teacher’s gas tank. He decided then that he would no longer let the Angry Petes of the world dictate his life to him. He decided then that one day the world would know his name and his deeds, courtesy of some crazy person’s blog. He decided then to become a professional bodybuilder

Girl Talk releases new album, All Day

hornblower — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 23:25:55 +0000

Available for free download here. Unfortunately, there seems to be some heavy traffic on the site, so I haven’t actually been able to download it. Thus the world must wait for the inevitable Hornblower dis track. I want to make sure I have all the ammunition I can in my armory.

Even so, something tells me this one is going to be popular with blondes and fifteen-year-olds. I’ll stick with Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, thank you very much.

Time to party, internet.

hornblower — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:56:43 +0000

Top Albums of 2010

hornblower — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:40:26 +0000

Premature, you say? The first month of the year is hardly over, you say? Chicken noodle soup is better cold, you say? Prunes are your favorite dried fruit, you say? How about you just keep it down over there. An extreme amount of good music has been released so far this year, and even more has been leaked. So I’m going to do a little top 12. Here it comes.

12. One Life Stand – Hot Chip

11.IRM – Charlotte Gainsbourg

10. Black Noise – Pantha du Prince

9. Broken Bells – Broken Bells

8. Causers of This – Toro y Moi

7. Hippies – Harlem

6. The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night – The Besnard Lakes

5. Gorilla Manor – Local Natives

4. Ambling Alp – Yeasayer

3. Heartland – Owen Pallett

2. Contra – Vampire Weekend

1. Teen Dream – Beach House
We’ll see how the rest of the year shapes up. The new Hornblower EP is supposed to be a masterwork.

Senior superlatives

hornblower — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:48:51 +0000

Concerts, albums… what’s left? Songs, of course.

Best song to sing a capella: ‘Two Weeks’ – Grizzly Bear. Gets even better if you have someone else do the “Ooooh-ooh-ooooooh-ooh” to your “Would you always?” and “Maybe sometimes”

Best song that got me to dance alone in my room like a madman: ‘My Girls’ – Animal Collective. Technically, this happened in the last week of 2008, after the album leaked on Christmas Day, but it’s a 2009 song so it still counts.

Best song on an overrated album: ‘Lisztomania’ – Phoenix. The album: good pop, excellent at times. This is one of those times.

Best Elliott Smith song that’s not an Elliott Smith song: ‘New Years Day’ – exlovers. Who the hell are these guys, even?

Most likely to get me funny looks on the D train if I sing it aloud: ‘Lust For Life’ – Girls. Whenever I sing “I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine” I try to sing it just like Christopher Owens, and I totally nail it and Bronxites think I sound a little bit funny. Also, there’s that part about wishing I had a boyfriend/loving man in my life. Sang that inside Borgatti’s Ravioli and Egg Noodle shop and got kicked out. Ouch.

Best transition from live to studio: ‘What Would I Want? Sky” – Animal Collective. Seeing this song performed live (and hearing a rip from some radio show) I thought this was engaging for a while, but ultimately too unflaggingly repetitive to be a great song. Then, on the Fall Be Kind EP there was this crazy drum beat vocal mishmash intro to this crazy song and then hey it resolved itself into that Grateful Dead-sampling, hypnotic, 7/8 time tune I knew and sort of liked but about which I was ultimately ambivalent. And it was dope.

Most likely maybe to lose me some cred: ‘You Belong With Me,’ ‘Love Story’ – Taylor Swift, ‘Bad Romance’ – Lady GaGa. Umm, I’ll leave it at that.

Decades

hornblower — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:21:51 +0000

The title is a Joy Division reference, just to be clear. Hip.

Some people say the decade doesn’t end until the end of 2010. These people are overzealous and probably think they’re cool because they listen to Cold War Kids.

Hey, here’s a fun activity. Try to find out how many songs in your iTunes library use the opening drumbeat from ‘Be My Baby’ ! I bet it’s like a million. Just over the past few days, the “random” function has brought me to ‘Postcode’ by Orphan Boy, ‘Eighties Fan’ by Camera Obscura and some song by Au Revoir Simone from The Bird of Music the name of which escapes me at the moment.

Anyway, we were talking about decades, which are just periods of ten years, an example of which would be… 2000-2009. Great. Glad that’s cleared up. Let’s see if I can come up with some big things to say about the decade in music.

Best year for music: 2007. From Here We Go Sublime; In Rainbows; For Emma, Forever Ago; Untrue; Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?; Strawberry Jam; Person Pitch; Mirrored; All Hour Cymbals; Kala; Neon Bible, The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse; Sound of Silver; Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever; Myths of the Near Future; Marry Me; We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank; Wincing the Night Away; etc… Even if some of these weren’t as good as previous entries in their creators’ discographies, I still enjoyed them a lot. If someone were new to “indie” music and for some bizarre reason had to start listening only to albums from a single year of the Aughts, 2007 would be the one to pick.

Songs that surprisingly didn’t get some kind of high-profile exposure via t.v. or advertisements or something, or maybe they did and I just didn’t notice but how high-profile could it have been, though? or maybe the fact that I missed it says more about me than about the exposure:

‘Hey Now Now’ – The Cloud Room

‘Coffee’ – Motel Motel.

‘Steady Rollin” – Two Gallants.

My favorite albums:

10. Apologies to the Queen Mary – Wolf Parade

9. From Here We Go Sublime – The Field

8. Alligator – The National

7. Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? – of Montreal

6. Funeral – Arcade Fire

5. Feels – Animal Collective

4. Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven – Godspeed You! Black Emperor

3. Yellow House – Grizzly Bear

2. Kid A – Radiohead.

1. For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver

My favorite songs:

13. ‘Ignition (Remix)’ – R. Kelly

12. ‘I Won’t Be Found’ – The Tallest Man on Earth

11. ‘Twilight’ – Elliott Smith

10. ‘Avril 14th’ – Aphex Twin

9. ‘I Believe’ – Simian Mobile Disco

8. ‘Everything in Its Right Place’ – Radiohead

7. ‘The Purple Bottle’ – Animal Collective

6.’Neighborhood #4 (Tunnels)’ – Arcade Fire

5. ‘King’s Crossing’ – Elliott Smith

4. ‘Skinny Love’ – Bon Iver

3. ‘Fireworks’ – Animal Collective

2. ‘Maps’ – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

1. ‘Heroes [Aphex Twin Remix]‘ – Philip Glass

Best concert: Leonard Cohen at Radio City Music Hall, 17 May 2009

Artist of the decade: Animal Collective

Just heard another ‘Be My Baby’ drum intro: ‘Lewis Takes Action’ on the new Owen Pallett LP, Heartland.

Outstanding motion picture of the decade

hornblower — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 07:37:18 +0000

It’s really no contest. You will find no braver film, none more honest or more daring or more heartfelt, in this or any decade. Jaleel White proves that his revelatory Steve “Urkel” Urkel was no mere fluke, as his Michael here is both hero and villain, protagonist and antagonist, potatoe-salad eater and potatoe-salad … well, let’s just say you’ll have to see the movie! With Eddie Griffin as the wisecracking cousin or best friend or something, probably.