Tag: tokyo police club

weekend recap: notes and errata

This weekend we celebrated my son’s 1st birthday, and as such there was not a tremendous amount of time for gaming – so I’m still in a holding pattern as far as Infamous Second Son and MGS Ground Zeroes are concerned. Still, there’s a couple things that I wanted to talk about, so here we go:

1.  In my haste to get that Tokyo Police Club post out the door, I completely forgot to include what is arguably the most important point I was trying to make:

In this current social and economic climate, where trying to make a living as a professional musician is arguably as difficult as it’s ever been because nobody buys records anymore and revenue from streaming services like Spotify is laughable at best, and for a band that’s trying as hard as it possibly can to prove to both its old fans and its potential new ones that it didn’t hit its creative peak 8 years ago, it takes an astounding set of brass balls to have the first (and best) song on your new album be nearly 9 minutes long.  And because the song is so good precisely because of how well-constructed it is, and because editing it for the purposes of making it a single kinda defeats the song’s whole purpose, it seems improbable that it’ll see any significant radio/airplay.  (It is fortunate – and probably much appreciated by the record label – that the 2nd song (“Hot Tonight“) is also quite catchy and hummable and ear-wormy.)  But still:  I remain impressed that they did what they did.  Bands don’t often get a chance to make more than 3 albums these days before either getting dropped from the label or just imploding naturally.  If this album tanks, it may very well be the end of TPC – I suspect there’ll be a solo album or two from the singer, but you can only hang on to your dream for so long before the bills start to pile up.

2.  I did manage to squeeze in a little bit of Bioshock Infinite: Burial At Sea Pt. 2.  I’m not quite sure how far I am into it, and so I’m reluctant to discuss it in great detail.  But there are certainly things about it that merit discussion.

My relationship with the Bioshock franchise is in a difficult place, to be honest.  I’m still in love with the technical side of the game – the graphics and audio remain superlative, and it’s very difficult to play the game without wanting to take screenshots at every single moment.  It is more that my appreciation for the games’ narrative ambitions – even if they’re not entirely coherent – are directly at odds with their gameplay, which I’ve always found problematic.  As it happens, I fell in love with BAS2 pretty much immediately, and remained enthralled with it… right up until I picked up my first weapon, and then my heart sank a bit.

That this episode switches the emphasis from shooting to stealth is a very smart move, and in retrospect it feels incredibly obvious, and I’m certainly not the first to make the observation that it’s entirely possible that the entire franchise might’ve benefited greatly from being a stealth-focused shooter right from the get-go.  It’s just that…. well… considering how much intelligence went into crafting every other element of these games, making the game combat-focused above all else feels like an easy reach towards the lowest common denominator of audience.  I’ve felt this way ever since the first game, and even though the stealth approach feels a lot more natural, I still kinda hate it.

Still – I won’t fully speak my peace until I’m finished with the episode.

3.  Last week was a bit of an emotional downer, as far as things go, and so in my melancholic state I went and did a silly thing and ordered a PS Vita.  I also ordered a protective case and a 32gb memory card.  The problem is that while the Vita and case arrived on Thursday (as promised), the card is still nowhere to be found – it should’ve arrived on Friday, and I’m hoping that it didn’t get lost entirely.  And because the memory card is not here, the Vita itself is completely useless – I can’t even turn it on and get it set up without it.  (And because the Vita only works with these specifically branded memory cards, I can’t just run out to Staples and buy a non-Sony one.)  I know this is old news, but it’s infuriating that the Vita is set in such a stupid manner.

UPDATE:  the card literally just arrived as I typed that last sentence.  Woo-hoo!

UPDATE 2:  the Vita won’t work on my office wi-fi, so I can’t actually do anything just yet.  Boo-hoo!

on Tokyo Police Club, regret, nostalgia, etc.

I need to switch gears here for a moment, if you’ll indulge me.

Notwithstanding my day job, which has nothing to do with anything:  in my other life I’m a musician, though I haven’t been doing a whole hell of a lot of that these days.  I’m way closer to 40 than I care to admit, I’m tired, I have a baby, I live in an apartment with very thin walls, etc.  I still write and record every once in a while, but I’m certainly not doing it with the gusto that I once did.

Indeed, my relationship with music – not just how I write it, but how I listen to it and consume it – has evolved considerably over the years.  I didn’t know that then, necessarily, but I can certainly see it now.  My parents were classical musicians, so I grew up mostly listening to classical music and whatever current pop music I felt they’d permit.  (It’s no wonder that Paul was my favorite Beatle; out of all of them, he was the most classically melodic.)  When I was 11 and started going a sleepaway performing arts camp, I was introduced to classic rock and – specifically – prog rock; a few years later, my stepbrother introduced me to what was then known as “college music”, or what would soon be seen on 120 Minutes…

I could continue retracing my history of musical influences, but the ultimate point I’m arriving at is that I no longer care where the music I like comes from, and that I no longer care if the music I like is considered “cool.”  I haven’t been cool for quite some time now, and I’m no longer interested in impressing anyone with my eclectic musical taste, because nobody cares.  And frankly, I’m not nearly as fluent in what’s currently happening as I would be if I did still care.  Pitchfork used to be the be-all, end-all in terms of what to listen to, but I find that I really don’t care for most of the stuff they give great scores to, and I also find that they tend to give middling scores to the stuff I genuinely love (like this 6.6 for one of my all-time favorite albums).

I’m bringing this up because yesterday was a pretty rough day for me, emotionally at any rate, and on my way home from work I found myself listening to the absolutely epic first song “Argentina (Parts I, II and III)” on the new Tokyo Police Club album over and over and over again, and it was glorious and beautiful and heartbreaking and uplifting all at once.

Tokyo Police Club is a band that I’ve had a particular fondness for, for quite some time now.  I can’t quite recall where I’d first heard them, but in any event I eventually heard “Nature of the Experiment” off of their first album and it absolutely slayed me.  It was young and dance-y, to be sure, but there was also something very subtly melancholic about it; those open guitar lines in the verses feel wistful to me, and yet by the time the coda arrives the energy of the song is positively euphoric.  Notice, also, that there’s absolutely no wasted space – it’s a 2-minute song that leaves just as quickly as it arrives, with every second meaning something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQjWaB4npUo

The new album “Forcefield” is a long time coming; their previous album “Champ” came out 4 years ago, which was somewhat underwhelming when compared to the great “Elephant Shell” in ’08 – which itself was somewhat underwhelming when compared to 06’s “A Lesson in Crime” and 07’s “Smith” EP.  Upon first listen, this new album feels very slick and produced, and very precisely calibrated and engineered to deliver the goods.  The second song, “Hot Tonight”, sounds like it’s designed to be a classic Summer Jam – it’s a shame, then, that the album was released on a very cold day in March.

The charm in a song like “Nature of the Experiment” – to me, at any rate – is that it feels raw and sincere, and also sounds like it was recorded live, in one or two takes.  This new album – while still very listenable and enjoyable – sounds a bit more manufactured.

AND YET.

“Argentina” is an absolute knock-out, and might be my favorite thing they’ve ever recorded.  It’s nearly 9 minutes long and there’s still not one second wasted, every note feeling vital and necessary.  And while I’m not necessarily enthused about how slick the rest of the album sounds, I adore the production aesthetic here.

And even though I’m not necessarily a lyrics-first listener, there’s something about certain lines in this song that hit me square in the face.  I am suddenly reminded of myself at a much younger age, feeling unsure of myself (“How many kinds of people do you think there really are for me?“); people I haven’t thought of in years, of people I might have wronged and that I wish I’d treated better (“‘Cause if I’d had known that you were only in for the weekend / ’cause if I had only known what you were thinking I would’ve been so so so so much nicer“), of people whose smiles I haven’t seen in far too long (“and when you smile with all your teeth / yeah, I’m done“), of doomed crushes and unrequited love (“I don’t want to want you like I want you“)…

These guys are far too young to make me feel this goddamned old and wistful and regretful and everything else.  And yet I’m eternally grateful that I’m not yet cynical enough to stop getting affected by a truly great pop song.

Below is a Spotify playlist entitled “Many Feels Per Minute”, which is specifically made up of songs in major keys and fast tempos that also make me feel pleasantly wistful.  That’s a tricky thing to pull off, and maybe this list is too long for its own good.  But in any event, I got punched in the face by a song yesterday, and now I’m sharing it with you.