Andrew Bird – Noble Beast

After listening to Andrew Bird’s new album for the second time I have to say that I’m not incredibly impressed with it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad, but in the spectrum of Andrew Bird it falls closer to The Mysterious Production of Eggs than it does Armchair Apocrypha. While not as sketchy and derivative as Weather Systems, Noble Beast still manages to let Bird do what Bird does best (ie. whistle, play the violin, and string together odd vocabulary), but it lacks the emotion that was present in Armchair. Being jaded as I am, I can’t help but wonder if after the success of his previous album, Bird decided to make something more for the masses, an album that wouldn’t piss anyone off. In the end while Noble Beast is entirely listenable, but lacks the substance that made Armchair Apocrypha stand out and persist over time. I’d rather hear Bird say less of “something” than more of “anything”, which is what he’s given us in Noble Beast.

RIP Punk Planet

So I decided to log onto punkplanet.com to find out if the new issue was out yet only to discover that it is indeed out…and it’s the last issue ever. There’s so many bands out there in the world of indie music and while I didn’t always agree with Punk Planet’s reviews, it was nice to have a place that at the very least sorted the truly indie from the mainstream and poser indie scene. That’s gone now, and come two months from now (when the next issue of Punk Planet would have been available) I’ll find myself in the usual situation: awash in a sea of lame bands all vying for my attention. I rarely listen to anything unless I hear about it via word of mouth, via Punk Planet, or if a track comes on Pandora and I dig it. With Punk Planet gone and Pandora (and all internet radio) in jeopardy, I’m back to word of mouth only. I guess it’s not any different than before I started picking up Punk Planet, but making a list of bands to be on the look out for every 2 months gave me something to do for a while. It gave me a reason to get out of the house and hunt for CD’s. Now I’m back to eMusic as my main source of new music and while I love the service, the number and ease of the DRM-free downloads, I like hunting for new music in stores.

People sometimes wonder why I go out of my way to listen to non-mainstream music. I do it because there’s plenty of good stuff out there that no one ever notices. Granted there are mainstream bands who really work hard and make good music, I’m not complaining about them, but the cast majority of the mainstream is about money. If most mainstream bands had to defend their bland, overproduced, formulaic music they wouldn’t be able to to. The real bands, the hard-working indie bands, the people who are making music because they love it and who struggle everyday to continue doing what they love, those are the real musicians. Most people don’t care, but intent is important to me when it comes to art, I think it’s why I don’t like Andy Warhol. All Warhol ever did was spend money to make art that he knew people would fawn over. He played the mainstream game for money and fame and laughs. He didn’t care about his work, he cared about his image. Real art comes from the soul, it’s what you’d be doing even if the whole world was standing in your way. That’s an ideology I can get behind because it’s something I’ve done and I think that people who are like that, musicians, artists, etc. should get the support they deserve instead of the posers who strive for mediocrity because they know it will sell.

Punk Planet is just another drop in the bucket of the indie world, another symptom of a society that glorifies the most advertised things as opposed to the true works of genius.