Hard Like Algebra

I finally got my copy of the re-issue of the incredible Ben Folds Five album Whatever and Ever Amen the other day, after watching it rot on my Amazon Wish List for years. It’s so cheap now that it’s insulting, for such a great album to be bargain-binned out like this.

This album exists on a tape that was so beloved that even my good buddy Nate talks about it. One side had this album, the other had the Promise Ring’s Nothing Feels Good. I flipped that shit into the Ford Tempo so many times. I remember entire moves—from college to the “home” that was my mom’s new apartment, back again—where all I did was throw this in my old stereo and flip it over and over. I still don’t know the full lyrics to “Evaporated,” because the song always cut off during one of the “oh God, what have I doooone” lines. It always trips me up.

Whatever and Ever Amen also has “Brick,” the biggest Ben Folds song until “Landed” became an unlikely 2005 hit. I go back and forth about finding out the origins of lyrics to my favorite songs. One side of the coin is that knowing The Sunset Tree is heavily autobiographical makes it even more powerful of an album—the best of the Mountain Goats catalog, in my opinion. On the other hand, songs like “Brick” make me not want to compare the narrative to real life events; maybe I’m stupid and that’s why I didn’t know what he was getting at in the song, but really, I think it’s more that the song can mean a lot of things and I hate singing it and thinking of what it’s supposed to be about.

I remember that moment in 1997 when this album and this band was everywhere. It spread around campus so quickly, seemingly coming out of every dorm room that fall of my sophomore year of college. Musical theater majors would bring the house down by covering “Selfless, Cold, and Composed.” My closest friend would baffle me by being someone who listened to them when he was still in high school. I wonder if bands can do this anymore; are there albums that just blow up like that now, or is it all just singles and Gaga and BitTorrent on campuses now?

I’ll always love this one. “Kate” will forever make me laugh about using the words “cake” or “Nate” instead; “Battle of Who Could Care Less” will always be catchy as hell; and this will always, always be one of the best albums ever to sing along to in the car. And that needs to be the barometer for more good albums: driving away, wind in your hair, friends singing along, who the hell cares where we are driving?

***

One album a day says it better in three words: “plonky piano pleasure”

Read part of a 1997 review of the album on my new “reviews from when they came out” tumblr

So it’s not every day that your favorite band puts out a new album, and the real truth is that I am typically pretty on top of these things in the manner of anybody who grew up claiming that music changed his life and is now thirty-one and would still probably hold on to this fact.  So it was strange to the point of feeling disconcerting when I got the Insound newsletter today and it mentioned that yes, that crazy* bible-themed new Mountain Goats album, The Life of the World to Come, came out today.

Needless to say I have never been more on time as far as leaving for lunch break in my life.

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Me and You and No One Needed to See That

Today’s “piece of art” will actually be a “bit of a rant” about the direction of art and an ongoing conversation that has included, this week, me, my girlfriend, Steven Pinker, and a Miranda July movie.

Because seriously, I really, really like Miranda July. Learning to Love You More is one of the best things that ever happened to the internet, and her short story book kicks so many kinds of ass. 

But man–MAN–I am not feeling good about Me and You And Everyone We Know.

[btw some spoilers are kind of necessary below, so stick with me. the movie is 4 years old after all]

Erin and I had a pretty big discussion the other day about art and what makes something art, and it has been bouncing around in my head.  I came off as a goon when we really sat down and talked about it in reference to the Guerilla Girls, but that’s because I do that defensive man thing instead of that “appear to actually be actually listening” thing, sometimes.  It turns out that I was listening, and she raised a lot of good points, and then we watched Steven Pinker talking about* how one big shift in the arts in the last century or so was a shift away from beauty and pleasurable art.  His contention is essentially that actually, we are pretty much hard wired to have a predilection towards certain things, genetically, and it might be in the last 50 years or so that artists have stated working against that instinct. 

Now, as he points out in that talk, art folk have totally scoffed at this idea. I’m sure it goes something like “how can you say that you know what is pleasurable or beautiful? Maybe I find Carolee Schneeman’s Interior Scroll to be not only a daring and seminal feminist performance piece, but also to be quite pretty!”  Or something. And that’s fine.   I have my art degree, and one of the things I’ve been thinking about is that training in the arts actually helps to prepare you to understand art, and, perhaps, expand your definition of beauty or pleasure in art.

It’s also what has moved people towards elitism, towards not being satisfied with a simple, joyous song, or a pretty landscape painting, or, say, a movie that  doesn’t include a six year old kid (however unknowingly) engaging in cybersex with someone who turns out to be a grown woman that’s another character in the movie.  For instance.

It was definitely gorgeously filmed, but here was a lot to squick about in this movie, and I’m not going to get into all of the details, but when one of the most redeeming moments is a grown man deciding not to act upon his fantasy of a threesome with two underaged girls despite being given the chance,** you have to ask yourself …actually I can’t decide what to ask myself.   Here are some questions that I considered, though I’m not sure they are hitting the mark:

• Was that necessary?
• How did this movie get made in Hollywood?
• How did this movie win all of these awards?
• How did all of this crazy shit just…fly under the radar?
• How come I had read enough about this movie to be so intrigued that I still wanted to see it, four years after it’s release, yet I had no idea about all the creepy stuff in it?
• Can I get someone to make a movie that takes the awesome stuff about her submissions to the museum and pulls that out and makes a movie about that?  

I am now on a tangent but I think you get the idea.

Anyway, at this point, I wonder if I’m just getting old, or too far removed from the Cool Knowing that results from immersion in contemporary art culture, or maybe just “mellowing out.”  But I think the success last year (worldwide, and in my own house) of Vampire Weekend proves that in many ways, people finally want artists of all kinds to stop making things that are ugly, unlistenable, angry, mopey, and unpleasant. 

I’m going to go put some wholesome fun like Vicky Cristina Barcelona on my holds list now.

*I am paraphrasing here in the hopes that if I got it completely incorrect, Erin will tell me.
**Yes, yes, American Beauty is one of my favorite films of all time.  I recognize the inconsistency here.