release date.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kZR6aMj3fr0xAKBY77cRgTVTofp6VMXvQ
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
the silver mt. zion memorial orchestra & tra-la-la band - born into trouble as the sparks fly upward
Disappointment
i initially found this record incredibly disappointing, and have to interject a level of frustration attached to that, as it was also the point where people that i knew began listening to the band. yeah, i liked these guys before they were cool and got a little irked when they started selling more records. this was the record that penetrated the outside world, and brought people back to gybe! by proxy (it wasn't the other way around). i suppose that, for a lot of people, it defined the collective, and that is unfortunate because it is actually fairly atypical.
it was never about not wanting to share. in fact, i tried pretty hard to share. "hey guys, listen to this!"; "i'm going to a concert on wednesday night, wanna come?"; "i made you this cd-r because i think you'll really like it"; etc. i was fairly persistent, even. reactions ran the boredom spectrum from passively ignoring to openly dismissing: "it's just some more of that weird music j likes". once presented, however, with an endorsement by an official Figure of Authority - somebody on the radio, for example - minds opened quickly. "hey j, you should check out this band i've been listening to, the silver mt zions, i think you might like it". ugh. such is the actual truth of being a real hipster.
further, it wouldn't even have bothered me so much if this wasn't, by far, their worst record to date. sure, go ahead and send moya viral - or whatever the early 00s equivalent of viral was. it deserved it. i did my part in trying. this record? not really. in the end, misanthropy prevailed. once again.
at the time, it seemed to me like the band was going through burnout from over touring, but, in hindsight, it seems more like they were going through a learning curve. there are a number of people involved on this disc that weren't previously involved. what i initially perceived as a lack of ideas may in reality be a sort of orientation process. perhaps these tracks are overly simple and overly repetitive for the simple reason that that is what happens when musicians write records when they are still in the process of building chemistry with each other. the flip side of this is that it allowed space for the production to be exceedingly strong. this is an aspect of the band that sadly dissipated as the band shifted from a studio side project to a main focus live act, and that hits it's apex here.
bad production can ruin a record, and excellent production can take a set of good songs to the next level, but infinite buckets of the most glistening production in the world can't save a collection of haphazardly thrown together songs, which is what this is underneath it's shiny exterior. it's maybe better to analyze it as a record, as it seems like that is how they meant to construct it. it also provides the proper perspective in understanding the record's flaws...
two of the first three tracks are redundant. it almost seems as though they wrote three introductions to the fourth track, couldn't figure out which one they wanted to use, and so included all three of them. personally, i prefer the first of the three, with it's processed guitar work. i'm predictable. you may prefer the production work on the second, or the monologue on the third. something could be said regarding combining the three ideas into one track. the key is recognizing their redundancy in the context of the record's flow as a more profound explanation (than their minimalism) as to why the record seems uneventful and boring until the distortion finally kicks in.
it is difficult to understate the importance of the fourth track on the band's career trajectory and the montreal music scene in general. it was a sort of a hit single in certain circles. personally, i found it highly alienating in it's references to 80s hair metal and have never warmed up to it. this goes back to the frustration surrounding this record's larger appeal; i tend to avoid accusations of sell-out, but they were definitely floating around the internet. regardless, the appeal of this track is what set in motion the forces that produced that wave of soulless, corporate pop bands from montreal (like the arcade fire, who are from texas and merely struck oil in the st. lawrence). "good" is a very vague term, but there is simply no argument that can lead to describing this track that way, whether you happen to have guilty pleasures inclined that way or not.
the second half of the record has a few higher points, but is no more coherent. track five repeats the long, drawn-out, go-nowhere minimalist theme that dominates the first half of the disc. something these musicians understand in most of their recordings, and yet is absent almost entirely on this disc, is that minimalism requires tension to prevent it from getting boring. over touring or orientation? it's a secondary question. the sixth track is thematically tied back to the first disc, and may even be an outtake, while the seventh is a highly self-indulgent and very badly pasted together studio construction. by the time you get to the last track, you may be shocked to find a nice tune with compelling vocals amongst the rest of this drudgery; it really sounds remarkably out of place here. it always did.
i've periodically debated increasing the grading of this record and have always convinced myself not to. i recognize that, for a lot of people, this is the record that they understand the collective through, compare all their other works to, etc. might i be wrong? if all these other people think otherwise, should i reconsider? what i continually convince myself of is that these songs are objectively poorly constructed (it goes beyond disagreeable stylistic shifts) and that while my continuing reaction is highly personal it is nonetheless based upon a rejection that is rooted in objective terms. it doesn't matter how one approaches this record, it is written in a style of correct, tonal minimalism that is objectively boring.
you're allowed to like boring music if you want, or if the radio convinces you to, but i need to be more honest: this is a disc that can only work as background, and doesn't even work well as background because of the abrupt shifts in volume. while there are legitimately moments on the disc that the band cannot be separated from, i do not recommend the disc at all and will very adamantly reject suggestions that it is a "good", "easy" or "accessible" introduction to the band.
stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5ihOcGNBi8&list=PLnpQFjefXCRMStU4rO7P-9iI2koNNaHIa
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/ASilverMtZion/2001-BornIntoTrouble/index.html
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