Summer Is For Embarassing Yourself With The Windows Down

Now that it's warm outside, I've taken to rolling my windows down and pumping my iPod a lot more.  I love my Sirius radio and all, but who wants to listen to Howard Stern when it's sunny out?   The man is a walking cloudy day.  Like, if someone asked me to draw what a shitty day would look like were it given human form: Howard Stern. 

It's important to have the right music in this kind of situation, and my album of choice lately seems to be Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion.  I realize that if even one more word is published about this album on the internet that computers throughout the world will collapse in on themselves like a collapsed star, but: the album is awesome.

I know, eloquent, right?  My relationship with Animal Collective before MPP was love-hate at best.  Really, it was mostly hate.  Fireworks was an okay song, but I found most of the rest of their work to be overindulgent, repetitive, and grating.  Their hype was, to me, overzealous at best, and a perfect example of the internet indie music mind hive at its worst.  But then they released MPP in January, and I pretty much loved it instantly.  Of course, I hated myself for loving it, but I could not deny it's quality.  The band had taken everything that I hated about their previous work (the fact that the songs went on for way too long, the constant yelping, the lack of any discernable cohesiveness)  and refined it into this melodic, nuanced record. Parts of it are still annoying, but for the most part, it's this surprising, enjoyable work of art each and every time I listen to it.

 

So here we are at the end of May, and I still haven't taken it out of heavy rotation.  I can't help myself; it's infectious grooves and techno beats are just as perfect for this month's sunny days as they were for February's dismally cold ones.   What really sells me are the flawless melodies.  What sounds like a bunch of unrelated pieces often come together to make awesome music.

It's difficult to choose a favorite track from the album, but I can keep myself to two:

Guy's Eyes:

Brother Sport (I can't find a copy of the album version online, which is sad because it is awesome):

Love Lockdown

If you're any sort of Kanye fan, I'm sure you've heard about the release of Love Lockdown, which is available for streaming on Kanye's blog. If you haven't heard it, I will warn you that it's not quite what you would expect from him. It does, however, become extremely catchy after one or two listens. The heartbeat drum pattern in the back is genius, and that chorus gets stuck in your head like whoa.

More importantly, that album is not going to be called Good Ass Job, as Kanye has previously stated, continuing his trend of titling albums after his rise to fame as a metaphor for a normal life. It's reported to be called 808s & Heartbreak. Other than the fact that the title is awesome, consider this: have you ever heard a hip-hop breakup album? That's because they do not exist. Being emotional is generally viewed as weak by hip-hop artists, and in turn, hip-hop listeners. Kanye's taking a huge chance here if he releases an album all about his struggle with the end of his recent relationship. Forgive me for sounding fifty years old, but here are all these rappers yammering on about violence and sex and how tough they are, and here comes Kanye, crying into his cereal bowl and burning all her photos and throwing her clothes out the window, and you know he's going to completely blow them out of the water. He always does, which is why his "I'm better than you" persona works so well for him, and also why I buy everything he does.

I mean, imagine if Kanye came out with Tidal for the gangster set, and it sold three million copies? It would completely blow the industry wide open, because it destroys every established hip-hop convention there is. I mean yeah, LL Cool J came out with "I Need Love" and everything, but no one's ever really done this. It's been Apple Bottom jeans and boots with the fur for years now. It's all become eye-rollingly predictable, and this is exactly what needs to happen.