This book is the second link in the hopefully-short chain of cash-ins on David Foster Wallace’s suicide. The first, This is Water, was a despicable little book reprinting the transcript of a brief graduation address Wallace made (available for free online), filling a small book by printing the speech one sentence per page. Lipsky’s book isn’t as useless and infuriating as This is Water, but it’s close.

Any devoted Wallace fan knows that his interviews are fantastic—he displays a humanity and a refusal to talk the same self-aggrandizing literary bullshit as everyone else. But these transcripts are taken from the time in Wallace’s life where he gave more interviews than he ever would again, and most of Wallace’s remarks will be familiar to serious devotees—the only audience that would be interested in this book.

There are a few things Wallace discusses here that he doesn’t anywhere else, which makes this book a worthwhile read for serious obsessers: he talks about his career and its trajectory in some detail, he deals with his depression and suicide attempts (though he isn’t entirely truthful about either), he describes the process of writing and revising Infinite Jest, and he gives his opinion about music and movies. Now imagine all of that narrated by a smarmy jackass and you’ll get an idea of how truly irritating this book is.

That’s Jacob Alexander’s operating method. Alexander, the owner of Karnak Gallery, the creator of the Virtual Warrior Ink modeling and artist agency and a mixed media artist, is perhaps best known in the Twin Cities for his VWInk Girls, a cadre of models he takes to nightclubs, galleries, even houseboats on Lake Minnetonka, and paints their nude skin to make abstract, erotic living statuettes. But his art goes far beyond the sexual. Instead, Alexander loves to challenge the constructs and codified meanings of the world that everyone else takes for granted. At its core, Alexander’s art does away with modernistic definitions, instead symbolizing ancient, primeval, incredibly romanticized views of the world. By making his audience turn around and view art on his own terms, Alexander breaks the signals and codes we use to define our surroundings, instead forcing us to view the world through his inspirational, uplifting, slightly megalomaniacal visions.

Alexander opened the Karnak April 1, after several months of negotiating for the space. In the span of a couple of weeks, he’s formed a den of small-time artists in all sorts of forms, ranging from photography to paintings to mixed media art (3-D), all coalescing together under a theme of no theme. To Alexander, it’s more important that art exist, free of the definitions he finds constricting. Moreover, he wants art to be open to everyone, regardless of background. He applies this to his mixed media especially, keeping blind people in mind.

“When I design my mixed media pieces, I always think, ‘Can I make art for people who don’t have eyes?’” Alexander says. “Everything is very colorful in dimension, but everything parallels…for even someone without their sight.”

His inclusive nature is infectious, as he’s collaborated with many different artists, models, photographers, musicians and filmmakers.

Karnak Gallery hosts parties on weekends where people can look at the art, dance to the DJ’s beats, or watch Alexander paint one of the Ink Girls. Last weekend’s party included a chair massage and three dollar drinks. His work as well as his parties has been videotaped for the last five months by the Blue Bridge Media Group for an upcoming documentary, “AntiCoast,” which, while covering the Minneapolis art scene, primarily focuses on Alexander’s efforts in making Minneapolis an art hub similar to New York or Los Angeles. Karnak plans to show the trailer on April 29. That’s just the beginning of where Alexander wants to be, however.

Alexander’s charismatic character has attracted all sorts of people who help out with multiple jobs. His models help put makeup on each other and watch the door. The documentary crew helps with the guest list while catching all of the drama, meltdowns, personas and action behind the scenes of the business and pleasure of Karnak Gallery. It’s all a part of his overarching dream to connect these people in a variety of ways, helping them to come together and create more artistic opportunities outside of the boundaries of conventionally taught art or lauded contemporary pieces the same as he connects the artists in his gallery with each other, the way he connects art, music, lighting, dancing and emotion at the Karnak parties, even the way he connects the mediums within his own artwork.

In the meantime, Alexander, Virtual Warrior Ink and Karnak have a busy year ahead of them. Aside from the weekend parties and the upcoming trailer premier of “AntiCoast,” the next big project for Alexander, titled the “Xander Collection,” is scheduled to take place in August. Described as “cutting away the excess,” the runway show will feature local fashion designers with VW models painted in such a way to represent their ancient heritages, in effect reinforcing Alexander’s search for the primeval core of the art he loves. It’s the core of things that Alexander believes will bring out the art and the positivity in us all.

“I like to go backwards and basically remind people that humanity…will come through,” Alexander says. “I have a lot of faith.”

Visit www.virtualwarriorink.com for more information on upcoming events at the Karnak Gallery.

For the past 132 years we Minnesotans have not been able to make it through March without a snowfall, but it appears that we’ve finally done it. Not only did winter arrive late this year, but it quit our normally frigid doorsteps early as well. Our winter clothing barely had time at the front of our closets.

Yet, the ice is gone. The birds are back. The squirrels in my backyard, looking more plump than usual, are disturbing my sleep with their racket. The number of bikers and joggers is swelling. Track shorts, sleeveless tees, and athletic camis are taking over campus. No one can resist the weather—there couldn’t be a more beautiful early spring. But this is a college campus, and melting snow produces much more than just peppy animals and joggers.

Dinkytown’s streets are full no matter the season, and the early arrival of spring weather brought with it memories of last fall’s antics. Vodka bottles, Bud Light cans, grimy busted beer bottles and McDonald’s wrappers started popping up all over curbs and front yards as the melting snow revealed November, October and September of 2009, bit by bit. No stretch of sidewalk went trashless. The happy sight of this debris serves as a reminder that it is once again warm enough to leave all windows and doors open when having a party, and to blare music with the bass pumping loudly across town to mingle with dolled-up girls’ shouts and screams of “Jessica, wait, I lost my shoe!” (I think it would be safe to anticipate an early influx in noise violations.) And the lingering heat of the day means that you won’t need your winter jacket for the 6 a.m. walk of shame on Saturday mornings.

Who needs a jacket now anyway! For most of us, gone are the days of Uggs, sweats, and layers of scarves; bring on the T-shirts and bermuda shorts! This sudden spring, however, has provoked an awkward transition into the new season’s clothing: people can’t decide if it’s still a bit chilly or not. There are people at the extremes, either still bundling up in their puffy jackets—complete with hat and gloves!—or overestimating the heat of the sun and wearing their summer clothes all day, and then there are those who are stuck in transition.

Previously accustomed to dressing for Old Man Winter, students are now experimenting with Lady Spring, but are afraid to go all the way. Let’s label these seasonal swingers “biseasonals.” Biseasonals are easy to spot. Most of the students bumbling around campus are a part of this crowd: sporting a spring dress under a Columbia jacket, or pairing a flowy skirt with furry boots. A typical thing one might say to a biseasonal would be “may I offer you a light spring coat instead of that thick wool jacket to go with those booty shorts?”

My fellow students, it’s time to embrace the fashion woes of the biseasonal trend. There are paths to biseasonal success. The first echoes the ‘I’ll-probably-leave-with-someone-soon’ look. The sight of literal debris reminds us of the fashion debris that half-dressed girls have attempted to clothe themselves with. That’s right, the balmy weather means the smallish patches of clothing came out of their closet hibernation. While this bare-skin look may have success for a night on the town, it’s probably considered less acceptable in the classroom. The runways have opted to overlay their revealing outfits with sheer materials. The finished look: provocative yet elegant.

The second look is more along the lines of ‘I-look-good-but-I’m-not-flaunting-it-for-you.’ The key to embracing this biseasonal look: if you’re going to wear those furry boots with your flowy skirt, at least add neutral tones and tights to the ensemble. The tights will hold the winter-spring mixture together, while the neutral tones will offset those bright spring colors everyone is sporting. And if you’re watching the runways, you’ll notice the spring fashions add both glitters and feathers to their ensembles. Exchange your furry boots for gold sandals and your Columbia jacket for a feathery coat; not only does it look glitzy, but the feathers add a playful levity that fits right in with the weather outside.

It’s not often we students have a chance to enjoy biseasonality. With tips from the runway, this biseasonal period can be enjoyable without stepping too far out of our comfort zones. Before we know it, summer will be here, school will be done, and the only thing you’ll need will be your swimsuit.

Well, no. You see, my fellow Generation Y-ers, our precious Internet has created something of a catch-22. On one side, it allows people all over the world to experience things like the UK’s dubstep movement or a great unsigned band from Australia called The Middle East. Few would argue that the ‘net hasn’t expanded the common man’s access to music in seemingly unthinkable ways. Less obviously, though, the last decade has seen something of a race to the bottom on the Internet as far as music is concerned. While the infinite frontiers online allow you and I to peruse music blogs to our every caprice, it has a very different effect on many aspiring musicians.

Growing up in a super-charged environment of breaking Brooklyn buzz bands getting famous on bedroom-recorded demos, there’s a certain pressure that starts to build on anyone who would like to someday make music. Each new band paves their way to indie-stardom through a novel derivation on what has been done, a tangent on a tangent. And the obsessive, incessantly bitchy community of cravenly anonymous online commenters feeds the perception that authenticity is reserved for those who break new ground, shutting out those who might create something beautifully familiar. This leaves us with droves of 19-year-olds who craft songs with the sardonic jibes of the blogging masses pinging around their heads. Which in turn leads us down rabbit holes like chillwave and no-fi (and god forbid, glo-fi). While I don’t dismiss any of these “genres” categorically, they are representative of the larger problem the independent music world faces. The world of hyper-critical commenters that comprise forums, message boards and blog audiences have created the perception that glory is reserved for those who can out-shock, out-weird or out-hip the last batch of musicians.

Certainly, reinterpretations of old classics are still being made. Look no further than Girls’ excellent Album from last year for proof. And, defying all odds, a smaller group of people is even making music that can truly be called “new.” Spend ten minutes trying to find musical precedents for Joanna Newsom’s Ys and get back to me (my goodness, there’s a column waiting to happen). But the trend toward novelty of any kind is one that will ultimately hurt to the quality of music. Let’s remember, making music should be about pleasure and fulfillment, not some intellectual divining of progress and uniqueness. It’s striking how different a record like Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks sounds from anything coming out now. Today’s musicians would be well advised to heed Van’s words: “In silence easy, to be born again.”

This 1963 concept album by batshit musical genius Charles Mingus is widely recognized as one of the greatest compositions of all time. Written as a six-part jazz ballet, “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” is an incredibly emotional, beautiful experiment in orchestrated chaos. Mingus called this his masterpiece, and I wouldn’t argue with him (partly because I completely agree, and partly because arguing with Charles Mingus never ended well).

Deltron 3030
“Deltron 3030”

Deltron 3030 is/was a rap supergroup consisting of Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Dan the Automator and DJ Kid Koala, who released this space-opera concept album in 2000. It’s about the future, android and cyber warlords, has guest appearances up the wazoo from Damon Albarn to Prince Paul to Sean Lennon, and contains the line “Fuck dyin’, I hijack a mech” in the opening track. Need I say more?

Genesis
“The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway”

Before Peter Gabriel got busy playing Magnetic Fields covers, writing songs for Pixar soundtracks, and even before “Sledgehammer,” he was playing ringleader in the highly influential prog-group Genesis, who released the double concept album “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” in 1974. It’s about a Puerto Rican kid named Rael living in New York City who goes underground and explores cool shit like red corridors filled with carpetcrawlers, caverns of blinding light, and colonies of slippermen in order to find his brother, John, and in doing so, find himself, man… The lyrics are reminiscent of one of those early text adventure video games, and the instrumentation basically exemplifies the term progressive, making “Lamb” one of those records that still sound great even in these days of auto-tune and Gaga ladies and fully forgiving Genesis for ever releasing “I Can’t Dance.”

Titus Andronicus
“The Monitor”

New Jersey lo-fi punk band Titus Andronicus released this concept album in March to near universal acclaim. It’s based on the Civil War, as evidenced by song titles such as “A More Perfect Union” and “Four Score and Seven” and lyrics about how much being a soldier, having to shit yourself and watching people die all suck. It seems obvious and lame to compare this band and record to Bruce Springsteen, but it’s really more than appropriate with references to New Jersey, rambling piano solos, and lines like “Tramps like us, baby we were born to die” running rampant. “The Monitor” is a lofty project but not to a fault, because the band accomplishes everything they set out to do in its hour-and-five-minute run time. It plays out like a drunken, hopeless, sloppy “Born To Run” that’s not actually sloppy. And it fucking rocks.

Some of us might laugh at the web site, but I think we all belong on it. Twilight is like puberty. You wake up one day and realize the school you’re at feels completely different, and you don’t understand your body, and all the boys are starting to notice you. All of them except your lab partner Edward. He’ll barely even look at you, but he’s the only boy you want to look at. You’re sure he’s perfect, you imagine he sparkles in the sunlight, and you think if he went out for track he’d definitely be the fastest one on the team, but he’s not really into sports. You’re not really sure what he’s into, but you’re desperate to know more. He’s perfect, you think. One time you accidentally touch his hand during your lab and that night you write about it in your diary.

And then all of a sudden he’s talking to you and soon he asks if you want to go out with him and you say yes and now you’re dating. He’s so protective of you. It makes you feel safe knowing he’d fight a man for you. Probably he’d even kill a man for you. At the school dance, during one of the slow songs, he looks at you with his golden eyes and says, “Isabella Swan, I promise to love you every moment, forever.” You wipe away the tears and think “so this is what love feels like”. You can’t believe you found it so young.

Two weeks later it’s your birthday and you get a paper cut and Edward dumps you. It hurts so bad you’re afraid you’ll never feel again. The Edward-shaped hole in your chest is the only thing you have left of him. You waste your days lying in bed staring at the ceiling, sometimes rolling over to cry into your pillow. You’ve accepted the fact that you will likely never be happy again. Your dad tries to comfort you but he absolutely wouldn’t understand what you’re going through. The pain feels like it lasts for months but in a few days you meet a new boy. Jacob has a bunch of older brothers and lives in abject poverty and fixes motorcycles and he’s actually pretty cute when he cuts his hair. You know Jacob would kill a man for you.

But Edward wants you back before you get too serious with Jacob. He says he hates it when you hang out with Jacob, he says he can smell Jacob on you. Jacob takes offense and reminds you of how Edward dumped you on your birthday. It’s hard, but you have to tell Jacob that you like both of them, but you like like Edward. You stay friends with Jacob, but Edward demands to know whenever you’ve been with him. Edward is so jealous it seems like he’ll only talk about Jacob. And Jacob is just as jealous of Edward. Both of these men will kill for you, you know it. You just don’t want them to kill each other.

Then one day you’re walking in the woods with Edward and you see Jacob down the path. First they exchange glares, then words, then Jacob takes off his shirt and they start punching and you’re begging them to stop but the punches turn into grabs and holds and finally they’re on the ground, muscles flexed, locked into place. You stop your whiny hysterics and the woods are silent except for their quiet, low growls. You notice the sidelong glances they give each other while they jostle around in their embrace. Edward’s shirt is wet with Jacob’s sweat. You’re pretty sure this isn’t about you anymore.

Blue hairs beware.

“Home” rides along on a toe-tapping country two-beat while Deschanel delivers a vocal performance dripping so thick with charm that it’s almost impossible not to fall in love with her. There’s hardly any singing from Ward on Volume Two, and it seems a shame to place such a fantastic voice in the background, but of course the real star of the show is Deschanel, who is more than happy to croon and warble her way adorably through the record. She and Him aren’t venturing into particularly profound territory here, and some of the songs sound suspiciously Prius-commercial-ready, but one couldn’t ask for a better summer record: lazy, warm and charming enough for a garden party.

Roger Greenberg is introduced as he comes to LA to house-sit while his brother’s family goes on vacation. This is how Roger and Florence meet and begin an awkward, temperamental affair. Yet from the moment Roger is introduced, he becomes the film’s focus; it loses interest in Florence except insofar as Roger is interested in her. This is the film’s tragedy. Roger Greenberg is 40 years old, selfish, washed up, neurotic and irredeemably mean, in particular to Florence, who he abuses as blatantly as her past flings, but with more regularity. In the competition for Baumbach’s attention, Roger Greenberg, as the film’s title indicates, unambiguously wins. Ben Stiller’s performance, reaching squirm-inducing heights of awkwardness and awfulness, is commendable, and the film is consistently entertaining. Yet Greenberg is never made adequately sympathetic. This is problematic because the film seems to trace his attempt to redeem himself, implying some sort of achievement on the part of Roger Greenberg at the end that isn’t believable and is, by this point, even unwanted. His worst characteristics stubbornly remain throughout the film, which watches him alienate his few remaining friends. Florence becomes static as Greenberg moves into the spotlight, which is a shame. She is the real protagonist in this story, but in the film, as in her life, she is relegated to second place.

Malachai
Malachai is exploding. The band’s single, “Snowflake,” is tied with the Gorillaz’s single, “Stylo,” in the UK, and they produced their album with only $15,000 compared to the the $15 million that the Gorillaz utilized. In Minneapolis, they’ve been charting at the Electric Fetus for weeks, and I can say without a doubt that their debut The Ugly Side of Love is one of the best things I have ever heard. Changing their name from Malakai due to copyright issues, the Bristol duo are the nicest guys I’ve ever met. They performed almost their entire album at our SXSW broadcast in Austin this year, and their live performance is unrivaled. Check out coverage here: radiok.org/sxsw and here: myspace.com/malachaibristol.

Here We Go Magic
Did you see Grizzly Bear last year at the Cedar? Here We Go Magic opened up for them, and in my opinion, they were better than the Grizz. The six-piece combines fast-paced, canon-style melodies with the women in the group doing some incredible synchronized backing vocals. Their newest single, “Collectors,” is seriously incredible: a five-minute song of pure pop bliss and impressive guitar work from lead Luke Temple that would make everyone melt. They have a new album coming out called Pigeons, and they will be hitting up the Twin Cities on April 23. Signed to Secretly Canadian a few months back (the home of Yeasayer, jj, Jens Lekman, and Antony and the Johnsons), the band is setting itself up for a promising future. They came in for a session with us last year which you can find at radiok.org, and they debuted their new single “Collectors” at that time.

So begins Die Antwoord’s debut album, $0$. That’s right, dollar signs. Representing Zef culture, South Africa’s white, post-Apartheid redneck community, Die Antwoord makes shiny, grimy world party music.

How to describe their sound? Let’s take M.I.A.’s electro-African beats, the trailer-trash soul of a Kid Rock music video, with a little old-school 90‘s Aqua (think “Barbie Girl”) on top. Die Antwoord, Afrikaans for “The Answer” strikes each of those notes. Recently shaking up the blogosphere via Hipster Runoff and Pitchfork, this South African rap group has entered the music scene via the gimmick route, but they be here to stay.

To be honest, I don’t always know if I like all of their music. At times they seem to exude a type of world-conscious cool, the songs bursting with synthesizer blips and tinny drum machines, with a solid array of guest rappers from the South African hiphop scene. And their music is perfect for dancing.

At other times, they seem a little, well, gross. Like rat-tail gross, or baloney and white bread without flossing gross. What from afar seemed to be so goofily glitzy seems sweaty, sun-baked and tacky, as Ninja raps about masturbating, pelvic thrusts on video (his junk flailing wildly under his boxers) and says things like “drop tha muthafuckin’ beatbox, dog.” Yo-Landi Vi$$er, who’s pretty despite her one-inch bangs and mullet, sings in a high-pitched, metallic chirp and all but strips in the music videos, the results painfully unsexy.

But their best song, “Beat Boy,” seems to be strongest when they combine the elements of world-party awesome and trailer trash. Over stellar couplets like “look in the mirror, you can see it’s true, two nice boobs and a penis too” and the most painful beat-box intro I’ve ever heard, the song evolves over its eight minutes into a solid dance track. Though a little light on the bass end, the production makes up for it in style, and may be a well-needed break from your standard Justice muscle-flexing.

Along with making a case for the talents of Ninja, Yo-Landi Vi$$er and DJ Hi-Tek, the music speaks from a post-Apartheid South Africa. The layers of race and class concerns are astounding: music empowering an underprivileged class of white descendants of slave owners, displaced by a genuine need to break the half-century of legally imposed racism. Holy shit! A room full of cultural studies majors couldn’t navigate the politics of this band.

But the politics are just a tiny part of this puzzling, awkwardly funny band. Watch some of the videos circulating on youtube (I recommend “Zef Side,” which has mock interviews and a minute or so of “Beat Boy”) and you’ll feel like they’ve taken a permanent lease in your brain. What starts as revulsion will keep you coming back, sometimes dancing, sometimes amused, but ever curious to figure it out.

One last note on their puzzling entry: watching their videos, your inner hipster will think “next Chocolate Rain,” but remember early 80’s Prince? His music was disgusting. He wore nothing but sequined jackets and bikini bottoms and sang about fucking his sister. And it was awesome.

We manage to get the big important booth normally occupied by women you can’t have. My friend gives me a back rub. It feels pretty good. Hot girl at the table across from me makes “bleh” face at her friend. Get up, enter bathroom. Nobody around me, score, easy pee. Exit shitter, walk towards bar. I see cute girl from history class. She has a nose ring and studies “gender shit.” I told a bad joke first day of class and never talked to her again. I walk by and she glances at her wrist. Another PBR. First band is up. They’re mathy, angular, clear and accessible. Guitar is delayed and bass is dirty. They’re really good. One rhythm sounds exactly like “Formerer” so rest of set spent shit-talking band with friend. Cigarette. Girl from history class comes outside and smokes cigarette into a wall five feet away from me. I talk all loud and smart to my friends.

Go back in. Words like “moog” and “alesis” are scattered all about the stage. Big afros, big facial hair. Eerie lights. PBR, Yukon. They start and I know I’m supposed to be scared. Oscillating vocals and guitar solos and big, old music machines and the drummer is standing up, dude. Incredible; sends ocd-addled brain into powerdrive. Slam half of friend’s PBR. Cigarette. Brain going wild, bar super full. Everybody here is much, much cooler than I am. Lungs hurt. Throw up in road. Take a deep breath.

Re-enter hell where a drummer has been playing the same beat for 10 minutes. PBR. Bass has been playing for three. Guitar for zerHOLY SHIT THAT’S THE LOUDEST THING I’VE EVER HEARD his guitar looks just like STEVE ALBINI’S dude. Right ear = tinnitus. Bassist repeats “there are others like you” over and over and over again. This show rocks. Girl with nose ring still at bar. Tall guy standing up next to her, talking loudly. She looks up at him expressionless. Gotta pee. Middle slot open. Gotta cig. Pee on side of Turf Club. Cough. Cough, cough.

Re-enter. She’s finally here. Pretend not to notice. Air drum until band ends. Our eyes meet. She’s drunk so she talks to me. She’s wearing blue jeans and a bright shirt. She does not have a nose ring. I sit and for the first time tonight, I’m psyched. How’ve you been? Good. We laugh about I don’t know what and then she talks to my friend. Get out of here. PBR. Cigarette. I’ll do it myself and I don’t care who comes with me. Young Widows are up. I go up front. Thick bass shuts everyone up. Those cabinets are huge and have lights in them. Guitars cut through the crowd like a rusty saw through a stray dog. It hurts. The crowd stands still. Nobody knows the words. Everything hurts. I’m instructed to Just Forget ‘Em. I turn around for a final look. She’s in the forbidden booth yelling loudly into friend’s ear. Girl with nose ring is nowhere to be seen. Guy at the bar yells “sad dude sausage party!” Entire band looks at bar. I look at myself. “Nothing new, right,” replies the guy holding the coolest-looking guitar you’ve ever seen.

After that, should it really be any surprise that the foursome would follow up with a second video for the song? One with a Rube Goldberg machine that was more stunning and ambitious still than its predecessor? Not really, considering that after their low-budget, choreographed video productions for “A Million Ways” and “Here It Goes Again,” OK Go are regarded as something approaching music video demigods. Dancing demigods on treadmills, yes, but demigods all the same. And after this newest release managed to bring their ingenuity to a new level while maintaining their trademark OK Go charm, yet another revelation presented itself: The feathers in the band’s proverbial caps were amassing.

Really, there’s no better evidence of the strong correlation between the effort a band puts into their work and the success they meet. Take Las Vegas natives The Killers, for example. Frontman Brandon Flowers is known to none too modestly regard his band as one of the harder-working groups around. The Killers have a colossal fan base, an international tour schedule, and four full-length albums to show for it, not to mention an exhausting supply of videos. The band won NME magazine’s 2008 Best Indie/Alternative Band of the Year award.

The same holds true on a smaller scale. Blind Pilot, a Portland quintet growing rapidly in popularity, has only one full length, yet they work endlessly to promote it and refine their songs. Any song played at their Minneapolis concert in April last year sounded distinctly different just two months later at their show in Madison. And while many bands change their songs, few could brag that they’ve twice toured the western coast of the U.S. by bike. They knocked on doors to find gigs and lodging, and hauled their own equipment the whole way, with no van to back them up. Was the dedication worth it? An iTunes “Single of the Week,” a Starbucks “Pick of the Week,” and thousands of devoted fans would suggest so.

It’s worth mentioning, then, that OK Go’s newest music videos ricocheting around the Internet this year are, at the least, promising for the band. Add to that frontman Dameon Kulash’s online announcement about the band leaving Capitol/EMI records to form Paracadute, its own label, and the news of a national tour starting in April, and the future is looking bright for OK Go.

Maybe being a rock musician is harder work than it looks. This isn’t to say the famous mantra of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll is a misleading lifestyle; perhaps it just works best when you take it easy on the first two and go nuts on the third.

As the detectives dig they find that all may not be what it seems, and Teddy has secret personal motives he is slow to reveal. The film twists and turns as the investigation grows and things become strange. The search is intercut with visions of Teddy’s back-story from World War 2 and his family. It culminates with a shocking reveal from the main psychologist on the island, Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley).

The film begins as a crime drama but becomes very creepy quickly. The patients have all committed violent crimes and act like zombies, making every encounter chilling. As the film becomes more about Teddy’s inner demons and less about the original investigation, the truth is revealed.

The actors carry this movie and in some spots are absolutely brilliant, never tipping their hand as to what is really going on. The screenplay is well written but the pacing in the middle of the film becomes slower and arduous. The CGI is unfortunately cheap.

Overall Shutter Island is a good movie but not great as expected from Scorsese. It holds interest but drags on a little long and drives too deep into the human psyche. The twists become too much and the focus of the film becomes lost until the dramatic final minutes. If you want some thrills, this is worth seeing but don’t expect to be blown away.

Both Heart Gold and Soul Silver (previously the second-generation Pokémon Gold and Silver games on the Game Boy) have been graphically updated, maxing out the 2.5D capabilities and the full color pixilation the Nintendo DS has to offer. The gameplay is, of course, centered on the neurotic quest to be the very best, to catch all the Pokémon, to overcome your rivals and to be champion of Nerdtopia, crushing all those who dare oppose your PokéGod-like powers. The gameplay has changed little from previous iterations of the popular RPG, except that the features and controls are simplified and much easier to deal with than the Diamond, Pearl and Platinum games released in 2007 and 2009 respectively.

The big draw to these games is the add-on accessory, a pedometer that you can download your Pokémon to in order to gain experience, find more Pokémon and items, and get classically-conditioned exercise. Appropriately titled the Pokewalker, it adds another dimension to your PokeSkills by finding stuff that isn’t available in the games proper. It’s yet another gimmick that guarantees addiction to the PokeMadness, but it’s still kind of neat and fun (in a very, very geeky way) and adds a new dimension that makes an otherwise semi-stagnating game franchise feel fresh and current.

It’s juvenile. It’s geeky. It’s Pokémon. Unfortunately, it’s still a lot of fun for those who remember playing the original games or even some of the recent games. While spending time playing Pokémon may garner you a few looks, Heart Gold and Soul Silver are still an enjoyable handheld experience for gamers everywhere.

Tracks like “How We’ve Grown” and “Pomegranate” start quite pleasantly, with a catchy viola melody that loops along while layers of strings and percussion are added, with Mattson’s lilting voice providing a delicate vocal melody. Quickly however, the almost limerick-like sing-song nature of Mattson’s voice starts giving the listener painful flashbacks to Barenaked Ladies. Mattson seems to almost be working against himself in a fashion, as the painful subject material of “The Icarus” seems downright silly when it’s being delivered in such a fashion, and the constant looping of the omnipresent viola wears those initially catchy melodies to death. The album’s strongest moments come when Mattson steps outside of the sing-song: “Mr. Butterfly” is a touching ballad showcasing the real vulnerability and emotion missing from the rest of the album, hopefully a sign of better things to come from the very promising Anders Ponders.

For an added bonus, look up “In the Air Tonight Live” (posted by Sportadic22) on YouTube and watch the ever-creepy Phil Collins milk the moment for all it’s worth in front of thousands of people.

“Coffee” – Aesop Rock (feat. John Darnielle)
The first time I read the track listing for this song I did a double-take. Why is lo-fi folk singer-songwriting god John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats featured in a rap song? Turns out he’s there to turn what would be a pretty standard Aesop Rock track into something way more awesome. In his typical high and nasal register, Darnielle wails in somewhere around 3:11, singing cryptically about Franzia and vampires and closing the song in a totally rad fashion.

“Olsen Olsen” – Sigur Ros
One of the only truly epic songs I can really think of, this eight-minute long song by the best Icelandic band around really kicks into gear around 4:30 when someone starts plunking out the song’s recurrent theme on a piano, followed by a Phil Collins-worthy drum fill, followed by an orchestra and what sounds like a gigantic choir joining in on that same recurrent theme for a totally rad, totally triumphant minute-and-twenty-seconds before gracefully and gradually falling apart.

“I’ve Seen All Good People” – Yes
The world’s coolest/lamest prog band Yes has a lot of songs with moments that could be considered totally rad, but this 1971 track takes the cake at around 2:44 when the band does what can only be described as a synchronized “doo-doo-doo” over and over again to the melody of the song. Though it’s hard to do it justice in text, listen to the song and you’ll know what I mean. It’s a totally rad, feel-good moment that you listen to on repeat just because it makes you feel so sickeningly happy.

“Tightrope” – Yeasayer
This totally rad moment is simple, yet effective. It happens once at 1:23 and again at 1:36 when lead singer Chris Keating somehow makes the word “nevermind” into one of the most earworm-y things in probably all of music history. I’d tell you this moment is totally rad, but I already did in line 1, so nevermind nevermind nevermind nevermind nevermi-i-i-i-ind… (Sorry.)

Illegal filesharing affords curious listeners an immense freedom to discover new bands: the whole risk/reward equation regarding trying new music shifts drastically when you don’t have to pay fifteen dollars for each experiment. This allows the listener in the age of filesharing to listen to innumerable albums which otherwise wouldn’t have been sure enough bets to gamble dollars on. Most music that is made is somewhere between mediocre and trash, and the good stuff is rarely found where you would expect it. Illegal downloads allow people interested in music to slog through lakes of shit without becoming discouraged and giving up before they stumble on hidden gems. And once a filesharer discovers something awesome, he can spread it to all of his friends via what else but online downloads.

Filesharing also erases the problem of getting signed. Underground bands no longer need a record label to distribute their music and no longer need marketing campaigns to get fans far from home. Illegal downloading allows a band to develop a widespread enough audience to tour for without spending a single cent beyond recording costs. And the most prolific downloaders have been shown time and again to go to the most shows and spend the most money on CDs and merch.

So who is filesharing bad for? The most often trotted out and most risible answer is that it’s bad for superfamous musicians. This is absurd, though true. I don’t think a single human being on this planet could work up a tear for a millionaire being denied one more million. People also argue that filesharing is causing the decline of the major record companies. This is also a silly thing to get sad about, though I hope it is true: there is nothing in the history of these companies but the repression of creativity and the denial of profits to successful artists; they are the enemies of music and musicians, and if illegal filesharing does enough damage to destroy them it will only be one more success of this method of musical distribution.

But filesharing is bad for something, and that thing is independent labels. A label needs money to keep on running in a way that is much deeper than the way bands need it: if no records are sold, a band can still play live shows and sell merchandise; there are many bands whose albums are not the primary source of their income, and in fact bands on major labels make very little money from record sales. However, if a label doesn’t sell enough albums, that label closes down. Many independent labels are run by people who care about the music and who see their job to be raising awareness of bands they think are good; independent labels are much more likely to pay their bands a substantial proportion of the profits from their albums.

Though it may be sad to see venerable indie labels closing down and new labels struggling, it does not have real consequences for bands or for listeners. More and more bands prefer to go unsigned and give their albums limited or digital-only releases—with the internet, the major reason to try to get signed—visibility—has disappeared. You can get more people to listen to your music by giving it away than you can by marketing it or by being associated with a trustworthy organization, and, ultimately, if a band makes music for reasons other than getting that music heard, they can get fucked.

It is true that it’s difficult for a band to become financially successful in the age of the internet, but to say that like it’s meaningful implies that before filesharing it was easier, and that is simply untrue. Success is always improbable, if you care about your music you’ll make it whether anyone pays you or not, and many of the most popular musicians of all time never made a cent for anybody but their record company. Filesharing is one of the best things ever to happen to listeners and bands alike.

The first song on The Stooges is called “1969,” and its abrasive, confrontational punk spirit and sound immediately makes it clear that The Stooges are not mourning the end of the 60s. One pictures singer Iggy Pop stumbling through hippie havens, scowling and swearing, subconsciously building the momentum that would explode onto his band’s first record. This was a new kind of rebellion.

Drawing from The Troggs and The Rolling Stones, The Stooges presented a concise, brawny strain of rock that bands have been attempting to imitate ever since. Ron Asheton’s guitar switches from crisp, simple riffs to squealing, screeching, brilliantly discordant solos. Not to be outdone, Iggy Pop announces his arrival by the end of the contemptuous, swaggering first verse of “1969” and needs only the brief 34 minutes of The Stooges to show that he won’t be going anywhere, like him or not (he would probably prefer the latter). The Stooges is a lean piece of punk rock, just as vital now as it was then.

The Strokes - Is This It

In an era where too many people are trying way too hard, Is This It, The Strokes’ debut LP, is effortless. Singer Julian Casablancas’ voice evokes weariness and confidence in equal measures, but it always rolls and croaks at exactly the right times. Guitars and bass toss off perfect hooks, often several in a single song, cause why not if you’ve got a thousand of em. Drummer Fabrizio Moretti puts down such flawless, succinct underpinnings for the songs that you forget that nobody can nail it that well.

These are the kind of skills that musicians earn after tours upon tours and the bruises to prove it. Not these guys. And they’re handsome bastards on top of it.

Perhaps it’s because I looked to Lou Bega and Sugar Ray to define rock and roll for me before this record came along, but this has always been the record against which all others are measured for me. How did a bunch of slacker NYC kids make the best record of the aughts? Hard to explain.

Cloudkicker is a four-piece instro/prog/metal-ish band from Britain, and they’ve put out a slew of EPs in the last few years that are reminiscent of what Pelican could do if they sacked their drummer. Their songs move seamlessly back and forth between sections of gigantic layered feel-good chords and tightly frenetic rhythmically complex headbangers.

The only weakness evident here is structural: while every single riff in these 15 minutes is an excellent riff, there is not much order to them. A riff is played until it is done being played, at which point the next riff starts. The songs aren’t ordered into repeating sections, and there is no sense of build or climax. But Cloudkicker is a pretty new band, and they show clear talent as musicians and riffcrafters. Keep an eye out for their future activities.

Oh, and one more thing: all of their music is free. Go to http://cloudkicker.uk.googlepages.com and download yourself some.

Ethical issues aside, the Drops fare better when they stick to old-time covers. “Don’t Get Trouble In Your Mind” in particular is a fun track, the youth of the players lending it the energy it needs to succeed. This is maybe the best understanding of the record: young people playing music they love with the energy it deserves. But when they stray from their subgenre the results are subpar: “Reynadine” is a real wincer, Tom Waits’ “Trampled Rose” is better left alone, and the only original song on the record, “Kissin’ and Cussin’,” differs greatly from the rest of the album in mood and instrumentation, in addition to not being very good.

But when music is truly great, we are left still in our words. We could talk about, but it would amount to simple praises that would do no respect to the music. So why is it so difficult to discuss great music? It is not, after all, that we are unversed on the subject matter. It is because we were so forcibly possessed by those sounds that words seem unfit to address the experience.

Of course, great music is a language itself—a language of (pure) subjectivity—so, while great music may not be proliferate in the world to any individual’s mind, one may very well meet a person who is moved by his or her own conception of great music regularly. One notices the effect this music has in another’s speech and writing.

In speech, praise can take many forms: stuttering, endless sentences, surprisingly succinct utterances (e.g. “Love it”), grand gesturing, or fluxes in the speed of the delivered verse. In writing, it might take form of some incredible analogy. Often the writer will keep his or her reverence in check and attempt to describe those aspects of the music that were so phenomenal: How the sound was very tight (i.e. fitting to itself), how all the beats seemed to come at the exact moment; tuned to what we might call our being or spirit, the soundness of the structure or execution of it, the sound was well-balanced across the range, et cetra.

Might the difficulty of articulating something beyond these value judgments be a result of the poverty of human language? Or maybe our relatively weak command of this language? There are surely plenty of individuals who are particularly gifted and entertaining to discuss music with, so to say we have weak command might be a bit dramatizing. Even these fluent individuals, though, cannot recreate the intense and deeply-rooted feeling we gain when we encounter great music. It may be necessary to turn to the other arts to speak to the profundity of music. This turning itself is strange—is discourse itself not an art?

Writing and speaking and communicating in general are art forms that can be practiced and mastered—yet they continually speak superficially to the effect of music. Are there some art forms that speak to us more thoroughly? Can a painting, words formed into a poem, a theatrical performance or a drawing approach speaking to the laudability of music? Or would these too prove to be insufficient in communicating our experience? It may be that music speaks to something deeper and beyond human phenomenal experience.

This is consistent with the idea suggested by Schopenhauer that music is inherently nonrepresentational and stands out from other arts in this regard; even if music does have a physical representation (the collision of air molecules) it does not explicitly relate to any physical object. We may argue that we can learn to associate a note or sound with something in the real world, as we do with any language. One might counter that this symbolism in music is not as explicit or concrete as in a constructed language or physical work of art.

Thus, as Schopenhauer might say, we can use the non-representationality of music to escape the representational world or speak to the underlying reality of these objects (Schopenhauer’s Will). In this context, we would say language cannot adhere to music because it speaks to us on a different level. Good music is something that speaks effectively to the real world (the world beyond objects). This idea appears to be in conflict with itself: music both speaks to and provides relief from the underlying reality of the world or the Will. The paradox is relieved somewhat if we understand Schopenhauer’s Will not as some unknowable noumena, or things in themselves, but as experiencing the world beyond objects through ourselves and our all-too-human drives (according to Schopenhauer, primarily through the drive to live and reproduce).

Authors and philosophers have long spoken to the bounds of music and language — namely the terms by which the limits of language are defined. Nietzsche describes some of his early thoughts on music in terms of the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus, each representing, respectively, a sort of structure or semblance; and an intoxication and limitlessness. Nietzsche says “music struggles to inform us about its nature in Apolline images; if we now reflect that music, raised to its highest power . . . it must seem possible that music also knows how to find symbolic expression for its true Dionysian wisdom” (The Birth of Tragedy).

This means that while music can maintain itself in a non-representational and free and transcendental (Dionysian) world, it struggles to speak to the structured, representational (Apolline) world. Nietzsche further exemplified his analogy with Greek practices in theatre-going: the time when the masses came to disband their idea of the individual and join the masses in worship of Dionysus and the universal.

Music can become representational, as can any other language, but it is perhaps some underlying power of music to attach itself to something more profound—the Universal or core part of being—that makes it difficult to speak of in words within structure and convention. No matter how far we push music into an intellectualized process or a social pact, subjectivity will rule and we will continue to speak to this ‘universal’ idea within us all and retire to our comparably weak exclamations.

The section editor, drunken and reeling, clots of spittle and half-chewed food hanging in his beard like butterfly pupas, pulls two rusty and unsolicited pennies from his pocket and throws them in Eric’s face:

It is completely impossible to describe a work of art meaningfully—be it music, film, literature, or work in any other medium. There are only three legitimate uses of the ostensible description of individual works of art:

1) To evaluate the work in relation to the reader’s assumed aesthetic interests; to let a reader know if it is a thing they might want to check out or a thing they shouldn’t waste their time on. This is accomplished by a good review.

2) To clarify something about the work for someone who already has experience with it; to focus somebody’s thoughts on a particular characteristic or quality of a work they’re familiar with. This is accomplished by a good piece of criticism.

3) To describe a personal aesthetic experience derived from a work, disguised as a description of it. This is accomplished by a good literary description of a piece of art.

None of these can properly be said to be meaningful description of the work itself: the first is about the reader’s presumed values; the second takes familiarity with the work for granted; the third is about the writer’s personal experience. In none of them is the actual substance of the work evoked.

This duo has been garnering a tremendous amount of buzz around the blog circuit, gaining accolades for their infusion of standard hip-hop beats and the angelic croon of lead singer Sarah Barthel. If you were in a Starbucks within the past month, they were the download of the week, they just signed to the esteemed labels, Barsuk and Ghostly International (Ra Ra Riot, Menomena, Mates of State, School of Seven Bells), and they’ll be at South by Southwest this March in Austin to support their debut album, “Eyelid Movies,” which has already been designated an NPR focus of the week. They’re from Saratoga Springs, New York, and they recorded their beautifully produced EP in a barn. Radio K is a big fan; they played at our CMJ (College Music Journal) broadcast in New York City and snatched the #8 spot on our annual Top 77 albums of the year.

Small Black

Information about this Brooklyn duo is scarce, but they have been profiled by Pitchfork, Stereogum, and a slew of other websites, especially when Washed Out (touring with Beach House this spring) remixed their gorgeous single, “Despicable Dogs.” Originally known as Slowlands, the band disbanded and then promptly reassembled themselves under their current moniker. Their tunes are filled with ethereal background noise, spacey vocals and shoegazy melodies that take complete hold of the listener. There really isn’t a way to describe what Small Black sounds like. It’s just really great.

A Sunny Day in Glasgow

Let me first admit, in case my subsequent fawning becomes too much, that this band produced my favorite album of last year and one of my most treasured listening experiences. If you haven’t heard of the Philadelphia band A Sunny Day in Glasgow, you aren’t the only one. Only two albums into their career over the span of three years, this group has flown under the radar for quite some time, but their sophomore album, “Ashes Grammar,” was one of the best reviewed albums of 2009. Suffering from severe line-up changes, the band never expected to create what many regard as a landmark album for dream pop, and over the span of 23 tracks, ranging from 15 seconds to 6 ½ minutes, it totally baffles you how this many layers of music can come together so seamlessly. Incoherent lyrics shimmer through dense layers of instrumentation and huge, striking beats, and each song is a completely different experience and idea. Expect big things from these guys; even after a few months since the release of “Ashes Grammar,” their last.FM wall has exploded with a daily stream of listener praise. If you are interested, check out the session they did at Radio K back in November at the “In-Studios” tab at radiok.org.

The band I’m referring to is a little-known hardcore group called Cowards. Somehow, after witnessing their “last” set at the Beat Coffeehouse and being totally blown out of my gourd by their original brand of prog-infused hardcore punk, I’ve scored a ride up to Duluth with the bassist to check out their true final gig as a band. This is going to be the good one I’m told.

As we coast past completely whited-out scenes of forest pines, the soundtrack of our little road trip takes a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn—the washed-out percussion of the first track of Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” pours out the speaker to my left. It is only then that I remember the original prompt that I was given for this article: “why file sharing is wrong.” A bold statement that screw-you-music-industry-we’re-letting-the-consumer-decide masters Radiohead might find laughable. So, you might be able to sympathize with me on why that little doozy had slipped my mind. I love file sharing. Everyone loves file sharing. FREE CONTENT, get your FREE CONTENT right here, all day, every day, on the beautiful new age invention we have embraced called the Internet.

For bands like Cowards, however, free content is not the prettiest combination of two words in the English language. What most people would call “free content”—a self-released four song EP entitled Solitude—that can be mindlessly obtained with a few clicks, is in reality made up of the blood and sweat of three hardworking artists who happen to share the name Kyle.

Yes, file sharing is an amazing tool for small unknown bands to build a fan base by giving away their content. Megastars such as Radiohead also don’t have to worry about file sharing affecting their net worth too much either—they’ve proved that their following is willing to donate a hefty chunk of change. It is the bands stuck in between these two opposite poles of notoriety whose livelihood is essentially ransacked by the Internet pirate.

In an age that saw the major record label keel over and reveal its slowly dying overstuffed abdomen of commercial pap, the music lover was treated to a rapid rise in independent artists willing to create art that challenged their listeners. With Pitchfork and Pandora, we now have more music than our iPods or wallets can possibly handle. That being said, we do not live in a whimsical socialist state that supports the arts. The only way in which musicians will be able to continue to create that original “content” is if the individual consumer throws some bones their way.

Cowards’ last show was held in the basement of Kyle’s (guitar) parents house in Duluth. Nestled shoulder to shoulder in a dingy basement, circle pit included, with almost 70 kids of varying ages and dress was an inspiring and humbling experience. Cowards finished their set, and I realized I had witnessed one of the most energetic and amazing live shows of my life.

For a completely D.I.Y. produced show, the band accepted a good amount of donations as cover. Kids are still willing to pay to see punk rock. Leaving Duluth with this firsthand renewal of faith, I felt that Minneapolis might just feel a little bit warmer upon my return.

It may simply be my aversion to any discussion of morality that marks my distaste for The Machinist. It could also be the high hopes I had for its’ seemingly intricate and inquisitive plotline. Even until the end, despite the better part of my ego telling me precisely what the protagonist’s reality was, I refused to accept the obviousness of the resolution. I was set on a conclusion that I still couldn’t decipher—something I was waiting for the film to show me. Instead the film gives an overdone facsimile of the psychology of guilt, one that questions both the continuity of experience and the ability of the mind to harbor illness.

If I were to concern myself primarily with what The Machinist contemplates, in regard to morality, I would ask myself: is the guilt experienced by the protagonist, Trevor Reznik, a guilt birthed in fear or compassion? Unfortunately, I think it is the former—another idea that repels any preference for the film. The constant depiction of restrictions on life—the hostile workplace, Trevor’s materialistic notes (“Buy more bleach”), paying for sex, portrayal of a faulty police state—tell me perhaps there is nothing more than fear to Trevor’s delirium. Where is the humanity?

The subject matter is not the basis for all my dislike of the film. Perhaps both actors and writers are to blame for several careless, poorly-delivered lines sprinkled through the film. These lines took me from the cinematic moment and continuity that The Machinist requires to get across the relatively lackluster imagery. If the viewer is pulled from the harsh blues that the film is predominately shot in, the few scenes that do not immediately depict these tones (they’re outside, usually on suburban tree-lined streets) lose their effect.

Deniz Rudin

The thing that is the strangest about looking at a person whose skin is stretched so tight around their head that it is basically like looking at a skull is the bits of a human face that are not made of bones: the nose and the ears. Imagine a skull with a nose and ears. It’s eerie.

The brain pan curving up out of the back of the neck, arms like a snowman’s arms and legs long and sharp, the ribcage like lungs, spine running up the back like a lizard’s, like a stegosaur, and from it sprout shoulderblades like wings. Tiny bird’s bones. The uppermost tips of the pelvis clearly visible above the waistline of the pants. And the way it moves: this thing you’re used to seeing held up by a plastic stand in the science classroom moving under its will, like in a video game. The cheeks like big flat blades. This bizarre, otherworldly machinery somewhere down inside most people shown as clearly as it can be shown on a living person.

The body is obviously the star here and if Christian Bale would just keep his mouth shut and let the camera stay silently on him like a fly on a sideshow freak we might have a decent short film on our hands. If only his palms were thin and his fingers long and skinny, his hands like daddy longlegs.

But it is wrong to place the blame on Bale, for he was given words to speak and he did them justice. Though the film claims a Dostoyevsky novella as its main inspiration, the truth is that it borrows so heavily from Fight Club that a convincing plagiarism case could be made, and compared to either piece of source material it is poorly written and constructed, downright idiotic. And though the direction and cinematography are decent and at times better than decent, I feel like the director should not get off without punishment; he chose to shoot this script.

This movie is a passing well-shot work of dimestore existentialism and hollywood surrealism that succeeds only briefly in disguising its essential triteness, and its ending retroactively unravels anything that might have been interesting about what went before.

And the fucking music:
They tried to soundtrack “bleak” with oboes.

Remember Kel Mitchell? That funny bastard who loved orange soda on all of those Nickelodeon shows in the 90s? “Kenan & Kel”? “All That”? “Good Burger”? What the fuck ever happened to that guy? Answer: He’s gone off the proverbial deep end and has begun a new life of making bizarre YouTube skits. This is genuinely crazy stuff, folks. It’s like he’s been on a different planet for the last ten years and the only thing he brought back with him was a batshit sense of humor. Watch the breakdown commence on his YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/mrkelmitchell

I asked as many people as possible to review the same album for this issue. My idea was to showcase the essential and inescapable subjectivity of criticism, and to that end I chose a challenging record: The Purging Trilogy, a two-hour-long avant-guitar album by guitarist Mick Barr. The record is split into three parts: Ixoltion, Sacreth, and Hymns. As I expected, every assertion put forth in one of these reviews is contradicted in another, and above all every reviewer displayed their personal style of criticism.

Pete Noteboom
It’s a massive translucent pirate ship filled with damned souls holding scimitars cutting through the clouds. It’s a gigantic zeppelin exploding in mid-air amid a hail of flaming comets. It’s a young boy watching from the mountains with mouth agape as extraterrestrials decimate his small village with huge futuristic laser beams. It’s the dark matter that holds universes together. It’s high, high above you. It’s exhilarating electric narcolepsy. It’s a new kind of Raga. It’s long, it’s challenging, it’s natural. It’s guitars!!!!!!!!!

Smudge
Mick Barr’s solo effort under the name Ocrilim is almost two and a half hours of mediocre musicianship, slow and self-indulgent guitar noodling, and redundant harmonies. The whole thing reminds me of the posthumous J Dilla record Donuts in that it sounds like pages haphazardly ripped out of a musician’s sketchbook; no song sounds complete. I can only think that the title of this record comes from the feeling Barr got when he finally vomited out all of the musical refuse deep in his gut. The Purging Trilogy isn’t abrasive enough to be noise rock or desolate enough to be drone or doom metal; this is an interlude in background noise.

Andrew Bergstrom
I was very impressed by The Purging Trilogy, a composition from the mind of Mick Barr. Multilayered tracks of guitar grind and shred a wordless tale; the more-than-two-hour-long trilogy sounds like an opera for guitar, and Barr’s insane speed and somewhat spastic playing style evoke the stage performance of Paganini, who played as though possessed. Though it may be difficult to appreciate on the first listen, the album is wonderfully executed, epic and welcome push on the boundaries of music and of art.

Kevin Tully
The set-up of this set of records is simple: it’s basically 2 hours and 12 minutes of one dude playing guitar. Now, I’m totally in awe of anyone that can see a project of that magnitude to completion—that’s fucking impressive, I don’t care what you’re into—but is appreciating this behemoth the same as enjoying it? I understand why people like heavy-handed experimental musicians like Ocrilim, and if this sort of music is your thing then you’re gonna love The Purging Trilogy. It’s just not my thing. I’m not asking for the two hours of my life I spent listening to it back, I’m just saying that I probably wouldn’t do it again.

Angela Sanders
For an album that is over two hours long, not a whole lot happens. The Purging Trilogy is a huge undertaking for the listener, and while I can appreciate Barr’s technical skills as a guitarist, I cannot help but be dissatisfied with the product as a whole. “Ixoltion” and “Sacreth” have a constant drone in the background and not much layered on top of it. “Hymns” had some variety, but the technical aspect had lost its intrigue and I felt like I was listening to my life just hum by. Music should be more engaging than that.

Eric Brew
The Purging Trilogy is like eating processed, organic sugar straight from the packaging. It’s difficult to put into words: it’s absurdly satisfying as it’s being consumed, but in retrospect you realize you probably shouldn’t have eaten it; your tastebuds are shocked. Everything will taste flat for a while. Mick Barr’s sense of timing is incredible, and the depth of his compositions calls for every listener’s veneration of his talent. The structure can also be overwhelming if you pay too close attention. It can feel over-processed, as if Barr were a supercomputer calculating his next lick according to data pulled from an impressionist painting. Barr is obsessed with pattern and arrangement that can be too redolent of sugar and salt crystals at times.

Sam Johnston
In the time it takes to listen to The Purging Trilogy I can listen to “Bad Romance” 27 times, but fate has other plans for me.  With the first searing chord of “Ixolition” the walls of my house are blown down and there before me hovers, impossibly, Ocrilim himself, illuminated only by a thousand orbs of mythical energy floating upward against the pull of gravity.  He reaches toward me and issues a single command, “Take my hand, slave, and let us be free.”  I have no choice but to comply.

Zach McCormick
These songs, while all virtuosic and technical and lofty, aren’t that engaging. Great playing simply does not equal a great album, and this record will only appeal to diehard genre fans, who will probably love it because it’s a masterpiece. Everyone else is going to run in horror away from the mental sandpaper that is layer upon layer of buzzing, treble-heavy guitar constantly switching tempo. If Rachmaninov had been raised in a stoner metal band, this is probably what he would have come up with.

Natalie Heath
If I were to make a movie about a cat trying to escape from a paper bag that has been set on a conveyor belt inching toward some sort of giant smashing device, I would choose Ocrilim’s Purging Trilogy as the soundtrack. And this is no ordinary cat on its way to certain death; this is like the greatest cat, you love this cat, and you care deeply that it escapes. The intensity and scratchiness of Ocrilim’s like 200 guitars would provide the perfect musical narrative for my gruesome cat death movie: the movement of the guitars would correspond to the wild movements of the cat and the whole thing would probably say something really profound about the futility of struggle; I mean, this paper bag is really thick and cats aren’t that strong.

Sage Dahlen
This album could be described as a soundtrack to a torrential rainstorm, or a migraine headache. It’s long, full of self-indulgent, unremarkable noodling with some badass grunge and metal riffs interspersed. (I’ll save you some time: the best track is part 3 of “Sacreth.”) The Trilogy, however, is not long in an I-want-my-life-back way, because it never fully holds your attention. You can troll around on the Internet or make dinner while Mick Barr twiddles his fingers over guitar strings.

Peter Starkebaum
It all starts with a pain-bearing, angst-spiked guitar. In this horror there is an attraction; the notes feel sensitive and bare, like an open nerve being sliced. A sense of relief comes in Sacreth when the percussion grounds the relentless shredding; the album’s chaotic mood finds stability. And then come the hymns like a ghostly reflection of the first two segments, ending the album with a feeling of completeness and distinct direction. The Purging Trilogy provokes perspective and true emotion, but if someone asked me if I enjoyed it, I would have to say that it was like picking a scab: it took some cold shivers and necessary pain to get in to the warm, sensitive and bloody.

Michael Hessel-Mial
I am a tourist. I went to one of those steakhouses where you eat a 64-ounce steak and get a free shirt. I thought it would be easy. Instead, I ate about four ounces and passed out next to the baked potato. That’s how I feel about this album; it’s too damn long. But delicious.

Deniz Rudin
At its best The Purging Trilogy is stark and mythic, gigantic and cold. If you distilled all the high points of the record—the longing of the opening riff of “Sacreth 4”, the meditative grief of the first two perfect hymns, the ecstatic triumph of the melodic sections of “Ixoltion 1”—into one hour-long thing, it would be an absolutely incredible album, but for every piece of the record that I love, there is a corresponding misstep. Mick Barr is possessed of genius, but like most prolific artists he is undiscerning; he churns out two and a half hours of music and in it are both masterstrokes and mediocrities, often within the same song. In The Purging Trilogy Barr shows his potential to craft emotionally affecting music, but he hasn’t figured it out quite yet.

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Watch Mick Barr play guitar:

Beach House loses nothing and gains much on Teen Dream, their debut on Sub Pop. Still present are the lush organs that have defined the band, but they’re brighter this time around. Readily identifiable are Victoria Legrand’s thick vocals, but here they sound more confident, with traces of Stevie Nicks wandering in and out. Beach House are certainly sticking to what they have done in the past, but this album is far more consistent and accessible than either of their previous efforts.

The duo are masters of managing space. Occasionally recalling the auditory parsimony championed by upstarts The xx, Beach House are also not afraid to pile on the layers. “Silver Soul” begins with a riff Sleater-Kinney would have written if Lil Wayne gave them access to his cough syrup stash, and the band adds plodding drums and distorted synth underneath to provide some snug accompaniment. Then, in the first indisputable sign that this album is going to be something special, Legrand repeatedly sings, “It is happening again,” until the song’s conclusion, complemented by crisp “ah ahhs” in the background.

Beach House? Pop? Oh yeah.

Come to think of it, all these new “chillwave” kids on the block could take a lesson from Teen Dream. The whole record is a proclamation that subtle songs can also be triumphant. Whereas Beach House has spent most of their efforts trafficking in ambience up to this point, Teen Dream takes a half step forward, especially as Legrand’s often androgynous voice rises to the forefront toward the conclusion of several songs.

The standout track, if that can be said of a record that exhibits no apparent weaknesses, is “Walk In The Park.” In stark contrast to “Gila,” the best song off of Devotion, “Walk In The Park” shows no hesitation to engage the listener. It’s flooded with nostalgia, from the constant organ to the simple, cheap drums. But instead of letting the sentiment wash over you, Legrand steps into the most engaging melody on the album in the chorus, conceding, “In a matter of time/It would slip from my mind/In and out of my life/You would slip from my mind.” Whether it’s the hard “t” in “matter” or the fact that Legrand finally gives herself the space to sound anthemic, it’s startling to hear Beach House making music this direct.

The Aughts hurled more hyperbole at us than anyone could have asked for, and I hesitate to sully our new decade with more of the same. But what the hell: I think we’ve got a masterpiece on our hands.