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How Did it Come to This? This is Ridiculous

By Vee Tuesday May 18, 2010

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How Did it Come to This? This is Ridiculous

I’m listening to it again. For about the fifteenth time today. What is it about this song? On the first listen I literally could not stop laughing. Now, several listens later, I’m doing what I normally do with Muse songs: listening past the lyrics, letting Matt Bellamy’s voice wash over me like he’s speaking in tongues rather than trying to articulate human thoughts (much easier when he’s being largely unintelligible, read: Origin of Symmetry). And this song, this ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous song, benefits so greatly from that.

Let’s assume two things about “Neutron Star Collision (Love is Forever)” before we go any further with this review. One, that this song is indeed one of the most horrible lyrics I have heard since the days of the 80’s power ballad. And two, that it is, besides that fact, oddly addictive.

The lyrics. I cannot get beyond these, so shall we take it one line at a time and see what happens?

“I was searching, you were on a mission
Then our hearts combined like a neutron star collision”

No, I’m sorry, I can’t do this. I can’t take these lyrics one line at a time, it makes me feel somehow cheap and tawdry. But beyond the lyrics (“they’ll dissipate like snowflakes in an ocean”. I am not even close to kidding. I would not kid about someone I greatly respect abusing words in such a way) that read like a high school girl’s best attempt at working out her feelings about her ex and also getting into the campus literary magazine at the same time, it’s not that bad.

The piano riff that enters after the downright cringe-worthy first chorus is more than a little reminiscent of “Layla”, if I may be frank about what came to mind immediately. It took me a full evening, though, to realize that the Queen influence is all over this track. The drum and bass cocktail that comes in starting with the second verse is more than a little jarring, but combining that with Matt’s tremendous piano and the most bombastically over-the-top vocal stylings he’s ever put on record (which is saying a lot; we’re coming off of “Guiding Light”, after all…) turns this into possibly even more a Queen homage than “United States of Eurasia” was.

Sinking in now, a few hours after the shock, laughter, and initial wrestling with my instincts as a fan vs. my instincts as a music lover, is the quality of the production. Butch Vig, in case you missed the memo. I don’t know how this sound sits with me, to be honest. This is coming from someone who is a great fan of Butch Vig’s work with Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage, among others. But the layers upon layers really seems to strip something away from the raw three-piece power I’ve come to know and love from Muse.

All that said, I actually think I love this song, but I hasten to add that it’s not the same sort of love I reserve for, oh, “Glorious” or “Space Dementia”. There are a lot of reasons behind that love, and I don’t know that “kitsch appeal” should be such a contributing factor when it’s already hard enough to convince some people that Muse is more than “that Twilight band” (ohhhh, the rage I feel over that one, which is another story altogether). But the kitsch appeal of this song is beyond anything I could have hoped for. I wasn’t hoping for it. I want to be clear about that. I’m not even sure what I was hoping for after hearing the partially Ayumi-esque title (I still make the mistake of typing ~Love is Forever~ in tildes instead of parentheses occasionally), except for Matt Bellamy to exorcise the tormented, lovesick fool from his poor soul with this one. Mostly so he can get back to writing wicked guitar riffs instead of lines that actually sound right in line with the Twilight series. “The world is broken and halos fail to glisten/we try to make a difference but no one wants to listen”. What are you doing? Stop that.

“Neutron Star Collision ~LOVE is ALL~ (Love is Forever)” is not, at face value, a great song. Nor is it a bad song, from a musical standpoint. There is some good progression and composition going on here, and the piano outro is right in step with everything I’ve ever loved about this band, about Matthew Bellamy. And may I also give a mighty thumbs-up to Dominic Howard for his drum work. But that’s not enough. This isn’t like analyzing J-Pop, where I can go on about tone and compositional quality until I’m blue in the face without ever having to admit to an anglophone audience that the lyrics are actually about cupcakes. That’s because I don’t understand Japanese grammar and I can’t understand wordplay or what makes a superior lyric vs. what doesn’t.

I can make no excuses for Muse. All I can do is shrug, admit that Matt writes best when he’s either shroomed out of his mind or paranoid about alien conspiracies, and bite back any potential shame in saying that I can’t help singing along to “Neutron Star Collision (Love is Forever)”. Does that make me a bad fan? Oh, come on, we went over this when I talked about Trent Reznor in the last article.

In fact, the mass reaction to “Neutron Star Collision ~for TA~ (Love is Forever)” takes me back. Back to a time when everyone was absolutely sure that Trent Reznor had gone around the bend (and maybe he did). a-WITH-a TEETH-a With Teeth was received with much the same facepalming, laughter, and cries of foul. But he actually came back and went for something that defied any “pop” classifications that had been thrown at a-WITH-a TEETH-a (yeah, I actually think that’s the official spelling by now).  So, it can happen.

Then again, I tend to run with a kinder, gentler breed of Muse fan. I’m sure that some of you are taking frustration out on your copies of Hullaballoo as we speak. Can I have your tickets to Wembley in September, if you’re that pissed off about this new song? I’m just saying, is all.

Also in the second verse we’ve got a bass line that is just a little bit “Knights of Cydonia”. Okay, we’ll let self-derivation slide. And the guitar solo is way too distorted for my liking – it has the potential to be “Invincible”/rip-your-heart-out powerful considering the key, but let’s just fuzz that up until Matt might as well be in the next room. Okay. What happened there, Butch? Afraid the Twilight fans wouldn’t be able to take it?

That’s another thing that actually frightened me. The download from muse.mu came with the bracketed [Soundtrack Version], meaning…? What exactly? The [Soundtrack Version] of “I Belong to You” is nearly unlistenable, and this is me talking. Me, who loves “I Belong to You” (wanna fight about it?). Are we going to get another version of “Neutron Star Collision ~Soyokaze ni Yorisotte~ (Love is Forever)”?

Not sure if want. But, then again, I wasn’t even sure I wanted this after hearing the preview. And somehow the buggering little earworm has me hitting “repeat” over and over. Get out of my head!

Or, you know, don’t. Snowflakes in an ocean. Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.

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For Your Abuse But Not Intended For Internal Use

By Vee Saturday May 15, 2010

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For Your Abuse But Not Intended For Internal Use

Come on, Vee. Write about How to Destroy Angels. You must do this. This is what you’ve been waiting for. This is practically a wet dream for you. You loved Mariqueen Maandiig since Trent Reznor decided to associate with that greatness. You love Trent Reznor almost unconditionally, to an almost catastrophic level. Yeah, sure, you can make fun of songs like “Getting Smaller” but you still secretly love ‘em, because it’s Trent Fucking Reznor and that automatically makes it somehow okay for those lyrics to exist. You’re accepting the fact that Nine Inch Nails is dead, because other music bloggers don’t seem to realize: it is. Nine Inch Nails was Trent Reznor. Trent Reznor is no longer alone. Yes, that’s cheesy and yes that’s romantic, but close your eyes now and skip this line if you don’t want the hard truth: Trent Reznor is sort of a romantic. And Atticus Ross! Atticus Ross, Vee! He took Coheed and Cambria to a level unheard of with The Year of the Black Rainbow, and that’s only his most recent accomplishment! so how is this a block for you?

Now you have a music video for “The Space in Between”, so there are no more excuses.

All right. I guess so. How to Destroy Angels is the group birthed from the ashes of Nine Inch Nails, which is to say, birthed from the phase of Trent Reznor’s musical and personal life pre-Mariqueen and pre-marriage. It’s something that’s always troubled me, how as music fans we are hardwired to resist it when our favorite artists mature and evolve and show their age. A lot of times this is because the early years were so glorious, so legendary, that we never want to let go of that. There is that constant hoping for a return to greatness, but in hoping for that we often overlook what is a quiet and powerful emergence of self. It’s not often what we like to hear, and so a lot of fans will either move on or live in the past. I’ve discussed this in regard to a certain Empress of J-Pop, at length. But when I’m talking about someone like Trent Reznor, it becomes a business much more serious and prickly.

The man has been through a lot. He has made musical and meta innovations that have often been overshadowed by his tendency to come off as a bit of a flake, especially in recent years. After the zenith that was The Downward Spiral, many began to write off subsequent albums with increasing quickness and bitterness. And when something like Year Zero happened (which is what began my more intense and personal love of Nine Inch Nails in earnest, beyond the music), the tendency to write it off as a stunt belied the actual power of what the entire universe of Year Zero was designed to incite and to foster: creativity, activism, a bit of horror (in my case, a lot. Some of that shit was genuinely frightening), thought, discourse.

It helped to be following Trent when he was a more avid public user of Twitter (I can honestly say that he is what made me start using the site with as much frequency as I now do: I’m sorry, everyone), which coincided nicely with his blooming relationship with the lead singer of West Indian Girl, Mariqueen Maandig, and the farewell tour of Nine Inch Nails proper. It was an interesting time to be a fan of Trent’s, and to remain a fan during that time seemed to be difficult for a lot of people. Accepting his new directions and decisions were harder for some than others. I just went with it. Because he genuinely seemed happy.

And the endless debate on whether a happy musician (especially an industrial one) is a musician without the necessary spark to create is one that I saw too many times last year.

What seemed to be bothering a lot of people, a lot of fans, was that we were somehow “losing” Trent. Yes, the Yoko effect. That somehow his identity would be consumed by marriage, by contentment. Not a stretch that this was a common sentiment; after all, what is Trent Reznor most well known for, besides wanting to fuck you like an animal? Drug songs, depression songs, songs to commit suicide by. Happiness was a death knell to any hope that we would see a return to the songs that are most beloved, which is actually a very sick but very true axiom of the consumer culture. So many people found a pied piper in Trent Reznor, and if they couldn’t be happy, well goddamnit neither could he.

But now it is 2010. How to Destroy Angels are here to quietly prove that it’s not so hard to remain edgy, especially when all parties involved in a new direction are kinda dark, kinda creepy, and very musically talented. The first music video from the group is telling, it is symbolic, it is a powerful “fuck you”: take a look at “The Space In Between” and see for yourself.

It begs analysis, it really does, but my first reaction, beyond “this song is great”, was to chuckle and applaud the visuals, the not-so-subtle bride and groom imagery, the even-less-subtle double homicide (or murder-suicide? Either way, it works with schools of fan opinion) imagery. The flames. I’ll need to watch it several more times to digest the real power of what’s happening, here, but I can say I’ll be happy to watch it as many times as it takes. It’s a beautifully shot short film, and the song makes it even better.

Add to this the first single “A Drowning”, available on Amazon and iTunes right now. It’s easy to hear Trent in both of these tracks. He may not be singing, which may or may not be a shame, but I for one will step forward and say that Mariqueen’s voice suits the sound perfectly. It’s an ambient feeling, something from the best tracks of The Fragile coupled with the strange brilliance that is Ghosts. Post-Industrial? Would it be too presumptuous to place this beyond the era and genre of industrial itself? Considering that Trent Reznor helped shape and define the popular definition of that genre, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched. And surely, if we substituted Trent’s vocals for Mariqueen’s on “The Space In Between”, we practically have “Reptile” or “The Fragile” (especially the latter).

From my perspective, that’s the beauty, here. It takes what we’re used to, a musical style we’re more than comfortable with, and takes the hardest edge (Trent’s vocals, Trent’s guitar) from the mix, replacing it with a powerful feminine accord. It is not a bad thing. In fact, even if I had heard this outside of the context of Trent Reznor I would have been brimming with appreciation.

Give them a chance. Download the single. Decide for yourself. I, for one, and anticipating the first album more than I can say.

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Not a Gun That’s Done and Get Done by None

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Not a Gun That’s Done and Get Done by None

The thing is, K-Pop tends to dabble in the world of hip-hop without ever really embracing the original tenets of the genre: let the emcees lead thesong, let the beat crawl inside the listener’s brain, let the rhymes and the hook be beasts unto their own. You don’t need a DJ to bust out the best hip-hop; the beat is inherent in the rhymes. That’s how “NU 예삐오” is. The fact that the song is relentless also helps, with no “musical” break or bridge.

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It’s the Same, Same Song on the Radio; Makes Me Sad

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It’s the Same, Same Song on the Radio; Makes Me Sad

What happened to this band? What was so wrong with the full, sonically amazing production they had in 2001, 02, 03? I’m listening to “Marionette Fantasia” again, and the way the sounds fill my headphones is simply grand, each instrument with its own personality and each note of Nakamura’s vocals spot-on. The new single is just…rubbish, next to what I grew accustomed to.

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Louder than Sirens, Louder than Bells

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Louder than Sirens, Louder than Bells

Honestly, the last thing I thought I’d ever think would be great is 90’s-era Tori Amos accompanied by the Decemberists with a tint of Depeche Mode influence. But that’s pretty much what you’re getting into with Florence + the Machine.

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London Calling at the Top of the Dial

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London Calling at the Top of the Dial

She doesn’t do it bombastically, or with an album that wrote pre-release checks it couldn’t cash, or with media saturation that tells us “Ayumi is Back” until, like good little zombies, we believe it. Unlike 2009’s NEXT LEVEL, Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus is keyed-down, elegantly presented, and left in our hands for judgment.

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I’m not breaking down; I’m breaking out

By Vee Monday April 5, 2010