The A.V. Club - Popless

Music: Popless:Popless Epilogue 2: Reasons To Be Cheerful

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:43:35 -0600

Want to test how good an album really is? Try to pick a song from it that you'd like to share with your friends, to summarize why you think the album is awesome. Imagine their reactions—from the friend who's deeply into Lithuanian death-metal to the friend who unashamedly loves High School Musical. Does the song make a strong case for itself? Is it instantly catchy, yet distinctive enough in style and sound that a first-time listener would understand why you think it's special? Is it representative of the album it comes from, such that your friends ...

Music: Popless:Popless Epilogue 1: On Returning

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:09:21 -0600

On October 1st of this year, having decided that I'd gone long enough without listening to any new music, I plugged my iPod into my car stereo, dialed up American Music Club's The Golden Age, and broke my embargo. Why AMC? Because they're one of my all-time favorite bands, and because I'd had The Golden Age sitting on my shelf for almost a full year, unlistened-to—which seemed an unnecessarily cruel price to pay for musical chastity. Also, after a year of listening to my collection in alphabetical order, I found the habit hard to break ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 46: Confession Of Sins

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:49:16 -0600

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. One of the rules governing filmmakers who make Dogme 95 projects is that at the end of the production, they have to write out a statement confessing all the times they broke the rules. So in the spirit of those ascetic Europeans, I shall now do likewise with Popless. First a reminder of those rules, as laid out back in Popless ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 45: Daddy Played Bass

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:37:22 -0600

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. One of my most enduring mental images of my father is of him sitting on the edge of his bed at the end of a day, picking away at his acoustic guitar. But when he played in bands—which he did more as a hobby than a vocation—my dad was the bass player. He was a tall man, with a ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 43 & 44: Your Rock 'N' Roll Lifestyle

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:32:14 -0600

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. Before Ryan Adams started cultivating a reputation as modern rock's premiere burnout-in-the-making (and before he reformed, and became a reliable-if-a-little-dull old pro), he was a nobody from North Carolina, fronting the upstart alt-country act Whiskeytown. Adams began to draw attention from the cognoscenti with songs like "Empty Baseball Park," which takes an expression of reluctant reconciliation and expands it into ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 42: The Changing-Back

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:50:00 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. Back in Week 18, I wrote about that crucial moment when an artist you were previously skeptical about records an album that changes your mind. (For me, it's happened most notably with Guided By Voices' Alien Lanes, Beck's Sea Change and Radiohead's Kid A.) But there's another signpost in a long-term relationship with certain musicians, and it ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 41: Après Rock, Le Désordre

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:39:44 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. It's been said that if you truly want to measure a chef's skill, you should order up a plate of mashed potatoes. Not fancy, truffle-and-garlic potatoes either, but plain potatoes, cooked with water, salt, and a little dairy. Or ask the chef to roast a chicken. Or to make a cheese omelet. Whatever the example, the idea is the ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 40: A Little Race-y

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:45:24 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. If you're looking for a single song that encompasses nearly everything Stevie Wonder is about, I'd suggest "Do I Do," a bouncy number that's light in spirit and infectiously catchy, delivering the strong shot of unfettered joy that's always been an essential part of The Wonder Method. Not only that, but the song's impromptu rap and ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 39: The Shifting Tides

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:48:33 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. I first realized it was okay to criticize a movie during the Christmas of 1979, back in the days when my Dad would pony up the dough to take the whole family out the movies roughly twice a year: once over the summer, and once over the holidays. After a lucky string of post-Jaws blockbusters—Star Wars, Close Encounters Of ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 38: Drummed Up

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:27:40 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. Being the drummer in a rock 'n' roll band isn't always all that glamorous. You're stuck on the back of the stage, out of the line-of-sight of much of the crowd. For the most part, all your bandmates expect you to do is show up on time for practice and keep a steady beat—two things that you're ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 36 & 37: The Home Stretch

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:16:49 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. Way back in January, when I was attending the Sundance Film Festival and trying to write Popless at the same time, I joked that by the time I arrived at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, I'd have run out of new things to say about my record collection, and would be reduced to speaking in code, thusly: "The ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 35: Adulteratin' The Blues

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:30:43 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. According to legend, one night in the early 1930s, Robert Johnson showed up at the crossroads in the pitch of night and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his musical talent. That's a cool story. But I like this one better: In November of 1936 and again seven months later, Johnson traveled to Texas to record a ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 34: There Shall Come A Reckoning

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:14:24 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. Maybe it's because I was young and clueless myself at the time, but when I was growing up in the '80s, the decade seemed somehow softer than what had gone before. I'd heard all about the libertine, activist atmosphere of the '60s and '70s, and when I looked around at the decade I was stuck in—the decade of ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 33: Purple Entertainment

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:59:32 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. Between the ages of 13 and 17, I found something like a dozen or so pornographic magazines just lying on the ground. Some were out in the woods behind our subdivision, some were sitting behind a nearby convenience store, and some were just haphazardly tossed along the side of the road. I'm pretty sure I know who left them there ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 32: Lost Arts

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:36:15 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. Audiophiles can bicker all day about whether vinyl sounds "warmer" than CDs, or whether MP3s are inferior to both because of "loss," but I confess that most of those discussions go over my head. I can tell the difference between good sound and crappy sound, but my ears aren't trained enough to pick up the difference between good sound and ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 31: Mess Addiction

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:04:47 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. Here's how it goes sometimes: A guy likes movies, initially because he's attracted to story and spectacle, but after a while, he sees so many movies that he starts to get tired of the same kinds of structure and style repeated over and over. So novelty starts to take precedence over quality, and the cineaste starts grooving on such ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 30: Anglophilia-philia

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:54:52 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. Every so often, some British-born children's entertainment—be it a book, TV show or movie—gets imported to the states and has its terminology or voices changed so that it'll be more accessible to American kids. Whenever that happens, I shudder. I grew up reading A.A. Milne's Pooh books, Helen Criswell's tales of the Bagthorpe clan ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 29: The Dark Albums

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:37:06 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. When I was in 9th grade, I had an English teacher who nurtured my interest in rock 'n' roll by loaning me copies of The Rolling Stone Record Guide and Greil Marcus' Mystery Train, and by making tapes of anything I asked for from his collection. I moved on to a different school in 10th grade, then in 11th grade—for ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 28: True Believers

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:27:00 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. Nashville is both the capital of country music and the base of operations for a large number of Contemporary Christian labels and bands, many of them populated by gung-ho folks who first came to town to study music (and the music business) at Belmont University. People are drawn to CCM for a variety of reasons: some because it may seem easier ...

Music: Popless:Popless Week 27: The Second Half

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:01:33 -0500

After 17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs. I'm taking a brief respite from the big topics this week in order do one of my periodic "state of the project" updates. (Next week I'll be writing about religion, so gear up for that one.) We're now past the halfway point for Popless, and as I move into the second half of this project, I confess I ...