johnzinder says:
How?
My friends, I’m going to join with Chris and Nate in the game of music sharing. I’m also going to join with them in saying Why?’s ‘Alopecia’ is a fantastic album. It’s absolutely fearless (take the lyric: “In Berlin I saw two men fuck in the dark corner of a basketball court / Just the slight jingle of pocket change pulsing”).
I live two blocks from a used record store, and have been making an effort to buy at least one record a week from them. This ritual is very good for my itunes library, good for the record store, and only marginally bad for my wallet. Plus used CDs sound just as good as new ones! Last two records I bought were: ‘The Very Best of The Smiths’ and U2’s ‘The Joshua Tree’. It’s like a resurrection of the 80’s in my very own bedroom, albeit a selective and perhaps extremely naïve one.
The Joshua Tree is the album everybody uses to justify U2, and rightly so. To borrow a remark from my friend Clive, it’s evident while listening to the Joshua Tree that U2 not only had The Edge, but also the edge. The album begins with an angelic, slowly swelling, organ-like series of chords which wash away in your ear as they are replaced by quintessential-U2 jangly, delayed guitar. A flutter of drums and then Bono croaks out: “I wanna run / I want to hide / I wanna tear down the walls / That hold me inside / I wanna reach out / And touch the flame / Where the streets have no name.” That’s something I can relate to: it shows vulnerability, it’s not overtly political, and it’s far from preachy. The second song, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for,” continues this theme of the struggle of the individual which, as the album continues, becomes more and more synonymous with the struggle of the collective (country, race, age group etc.). To put it nicely, it’s got a certain subtlety that their newer music lacks. It’s a great album, and I suggest you take some time and give it a listen.
On a side note, here’s how you can tell that a graduate student has to grade papers: they write a blog entry, their room is spotless, their laundry is done and their facebook presence has increased 10-fold. Sigh. Back to work.
-J
