A Giant Dog Cover Arcade Fire

A Giant Dog at The Saint back in July

Neon Bible

I spent about a year from the end of 2004 through 2005 with Arcade Fire's Funeral in my car's CD player. 3 years later, the band released the follow-up, Neon Bible; and, ever since, I've gone back and forth between those two albums as my favorite Arcade Fire record. Neon Bible definitely contains some of my favorite Arcade Fire songs like "Keep the Car Running," "(Antichrist Television Blues)," and "Intervention."

The stuff I listen to has changed a bit over the last 10 or 12 years. And, maybe, I've drifted away a bit from those Arcade Fire records. One of the bands I encountered and fell in love with over that time is A Giant Dog. Like Funeral and Neon Bible, the last two A Giant Dog albums (the excellent Pile and Toy) came out on Merge Records. As part of the label's 30th anniversary celebration, A Giant Dog recorded a full-album cover of Neon Bible. Subscribers to Merge's 30th anniversary vinyl series (a group that includes yours truly) received their copies on purple, marble vinyl earlier this week. At midnight on September 20th, the rest of the world will be able to stream the album in full.

In a press release, A Giant Dog lead singer Sabrina Ellis says, "Recording a cover album, we felt like actors in a movie. Taking someone else's lines and embodying those emotions, and expressing those ideas through our own selves, made us portals of human expression… and that's why the album artwork is an open butthole.*

*The awesome butthole artwork was conceived by our drummer Danny and made possible by our friend Jennine Turow."

I hadn't spun or pressed play or whatever on Neon Bible in a long time. A Giant Dog imbue this classic with their inimitable, all-out, soul-baring, heart-filling style. They take something that I -- a lot of us, probably -- know backwards and forwards and give it a fresh edge and vitality.

Check out A Giant Dog's take on "Intervention," and stream their whole cover of Neon Bible at midnight from wherever you like to do that sort of thing.

What Does Mike V Think of... ...the Marketing Blitz?

Reflektor

It's "Arcade Fire Day." Like Daft Punk and, to a lesser extent, Vampire Weekend before them, Arcade Fire and their people have done everything they possibly can to make sure that Reflektor is on the mind of the record-buying public.

I've been a big fan of Arcade Fire over the years, but I have to admit that the Reflektor marketing campaign has been getting on my nerves. That's mostly my problem, obviously. Everyone's got a right to make a living and to promote their product, right?

Our friend Mike V of The Everymen has a bit of a history on the business side of selling records, so I thought I'd ask him what he thinks of all the pre-release hype around Reflektor. He makes some good points, especially about the balancing act that big bands need to perform when selling to "tried and true" fans (like me) as well as new listeners.

On another, very important, note, The Everymen are playing their final area date of the year TONIGHT at Mercury Lounge. They'll be joined by Life Eaters, and all proceeds from the event go to the fight against MS. Go check them out if you can and support a good cause.

CDM: Arcade Fire's new album , Reflektor, is out today. In the run-up to the release we've been absolutely deluged with pre-release activities. There were mysterious Reflektor Instagram and Twitter accounts. I even saw folks fanning themselves with Reflektor fans at FYF, weeks before we ever even heard a single. What do you think of the pseudo-guerilla and other types of marketing that characterize the modern album release cycle?

MV: Innovative marketing tactics have ALWAYS been a component of the record business. From the trading cards, obnoxious merchandise and television specials of the past to today's crazed environment of hidden teasers, easter eggs and campaign rollouts which take longer to execute than the making of the album itself, thinking outside of the proverbial box to get as many eyes on a new record as possible is hardly new. But I think we have reached a possible (hopeful) critical mass of pre-release hype generation.

While a perfectly crafted marketing campaign can do wonders for an album, record companies must walk the fine line of just right and massively overdone. It really is just that simple to cross the line from the perceived ubiquity that all record labels strive to achieve in the days, weeks and months leading up to an album's street date to "ENOUGH WITH THIS FUCKING RECORD" and I think a lot of it has to do with the status and size of the band.

For me, those moments that are manufactured work perfectly when the band/artist in question is juuuuuust about to break into a new level. Try these overcooked stunts on a band no one really knows yet and it's just a waste of time, money and brain power because most people might not know that Weaselden* is a band - and not say a clothing line or a skate shop or whatever the fuck else people advertise. Weaselden should just be out playing shows, building their fan base and selling records on a face-to-face level, because that's where they're at in their career.

Do this with a band that's too big and you run the risk of most certainly alienating a lot of the band's tried and true fans. It's an ugly feeling when you see the band you discovered while they were still playing at Mercury Lounge shilling BS on cable television. But you still have to tell people that the band has a record coming, no? So that's that. Arcade Fire could have sent out a Tweet this Monday saying that their album drops the next morning and I'm sure they'd sell just as many copies as they will behind this absurd Reflektor campaign. The biggest bands in the world don't need all of that ramping up hype. In a way they simply just need to put a record out (see also: Radiohead In Rainbows)

Of course this all begs the eternal question (posed initially by Socrates, I believe) of exactly how much a turd can be polished.

When I see these huge, worldwide marketing campaigns the first thought that pops into my cynical mind is usually, "Well this album probably isn't very good if they're selling it THIS hard." Because despite what has become an en vogue idea, most records sell or tank based on the merit of their music. Sure there are some records that sell WAY more than they should, but we'll chalk that up to the musical narrowmindedness of the pop-loving public. And, as always, there are plenty of records that should have sold a whole lot more than they have because they are just that good. But justice will never be served. Taylor Swift will always be a multimillion seller and no one will ever really appreciate Yank Crime** the way it should be appreciated. But in the end it is the music contained on that disc or that plate of wax or that file of 0s and 1s that will determine the inherent value of whatever garbage you listen to. No one will ever remember the street team chalking campaign or the hashtag promotion or the bonus tote bag you got if you purchased the album at an independent retailer. But they will remember if your album sucks.

IN CONCLUSION!!!

As a very wise record man once told me, "Why bother with all of this stupid shit when we have a really. fucking. good record?"

Good day, sirs.

*Weaselden is one of my thousands of fake bands. We're a psychedelic polkapop power trio. We fucking rip.

**If you don't know this album go now and listen, my child. You can thank me later.
   
editor's note: I tried to be as contrary and anti-hype as I possibly could, but dammit if I don't think that Reflektor is pretty good. - CDM
 

"Indie" Is The "Pumpkin" of Music

Photo: Martin Doege

That Word Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

OK. Bear with me here for a second. I've been kind of smirking over a couple of things this fall and the similarities between them. Fall is the prelude to the holidays; and, not coincidentally, it's also the big season for new album releases. That means two things: 1) Big "Indie" bands like Sleigh Bells, MGMT, (now) HAIM, Cults, and Arcade Fire put out new records. 2) Everything from ice cream to vodka to Pop Tarts to coffee gets a pumpkin (spice) -flavored version.

What do these two things have in common? Well the terms used to describe them have lost all of their original meaning as they've morphed into some kind of lifestyle signifiers. 

Cults and MGMT are both on venerable "Indie" label Columbia (Sony). HAIM's debut release is out now on Polydor (Universal Music Group). Arcade Fire and Sleigh Bells remain on independent labels Merge and Mom + Pop, respectively; but each have large distribution deals: UMG (Arcade Fire) and Sony (Sleigh Bells). But they're still "Indie" because, despite the elaborate marketing campaigns -- faux guerrilla marketing, coverage in major music publications, Sirius XMU Sessions / co-hosting slots, Saturday Night Live appearances -- these bands still maintain a level of credibility with Pitchfork, Stereogum, BrooklynVegan, and mindie kids. And so now "Indie," once short for "independent," just means "stuff that mindie kids don't yet think is too popular to be cool, even though it is extremely corporate and popular." The word "Indie," in the context of popular music, has been totally decoupled from the word "independent."

Similarly, in a piece that MomVee shared earlier this week called "The Untold History of Starbucks' Pumpkin Spice Latte," a VP at a flavor-extract company says that consumers love the wildly popular drink (which contains no pumpkin) because it evokes a feeling of "native American, locavore, retro-comfort." So the "Pumpkin" or "Pumpkin Spice" that we see on all of these products doesn't actually mean "pumpkin" anymore. It means "autumn, seemingly natural, pre-holiday, heartwarming treats that rarely, if ever, contain any actual pumpkin."

Now I'm not saying that major label affiliated bands and the Pumpkin Spice Latte are bad. You should try things for yourself; make your own decisions. I just find it funny -- and kind of creepy -- that we've all kind of been trained to use words like "Indie" and "Pumpkin" to mean, basically, the complete opposite of what they used to mean.

Letters

I Wrote Letters

Dear Readers,

I often hear musicians and songwriters talk about how embarrassed they are by their early work. Colin Meloy famously makes a joke out of his "Dracula's Daughter" (You think you've got it bad? / Imagine havin' Dracula for a dad) during the Decemberists' live shows. I remember David Lowery and Camper Van Beethoven doing something similar with a song called "Lincoln Shrine" (I don't wanna go / I don't wanna go / I don't wanna go to the Lincoln Shrine) about an annual field trip that they'd take as kids with their school in California.

It's not that early songs are always bad. Some are, of course; but I think artists often cringe at their early work because it came from a place that they've since moved beyond. A big part of my theory on how nobody ever really changes is that people simply learn to cope a lot better with the aspects of their personalities that they may not like so much. That takes time; and art or music or writing produced in the early stages of that process has the real potential to make its creator hugely uncomfortable. While someone else hearing an early song or reading an early work may find it "raw," emotional, cute, or sweet; that same work could make its author want to hide under a rock.

So my friend apparently found a whole bunch of letters that I wrote in my late teens. I went through a few bursts of letter-writing at that time. Letter writing is a dying practice; and, while I'm not saying I was a master of the medium, I do remember taking a reasonable amount of care in composing correspondences. It was always fun to send them off and then to wait for a response. That's another thing we've lost. The willingness to wait. Today, if I send an email and don't get a response within the hour, I start to wonder if the person on the other end is OK.

As I've discovered over the last year or so, writing is something I enjoy quite a bit. I'm glad I had that experience of writing letters and waiting for letters to come back, but the idea that someone saved all the letters I wrote back then... Let's just say that I'm happy that they still mean something to somebody, but I don't ever really need to see them.

They always tell you that once you put something on the Internet, it can follow you forever. I get that, and I'm OK with it. I mean, there's some stuff from my early forays onto Twitter and Facebook that I'd like to have back; but I was a fully-formed adult (or as fully-formed as I'll ever get) when I did that. They never tell you, though, that some people will fold up and place into a shoebox papers that they should have wadded up and tossed in the trash -- or left out in the rain, or failed to save from a burning building -- years ago.

Your friend,
CoolDad