Short Musical Rant #1: Bright Eyes, Lifted
I’m just going to go out on a limb and say it:
“Lifted” is the best thing that Connor Oberst has ever released under any name. Somehow I’ve recently found myself humming or singing random parts of the album recently and today I decided to throw it on for the first time in a year or so.
It marks the high point in Oberst’s ambition as well as his excess, and it pays off. Of course, for people who don’t like full-on angsty Oberst, there is plenty not to like: Over extension of his limited vocal capabilities, a couple tracks near 10 minutes in length, more instruments than many would deem necessary, excessively emotional lyrics.
Whatever. It all comes together perfectly. Lifted matches the passion of its predecessor “Fevers and Mirrors” and raises it with greater lyrical and musical sophistication. Arguably, its successor, “I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning” has more solid and consistent songwriting, but it just doesn’t carry the same weight that Lifted has to offer.
Even the weak points (Read: Lover I Don’t Have To Love) have their merit.
Basically, this is one of my favorite albums ever. Feel free to discuss, disagree or just straight up make fun of me for liking Bright Eyes.
How have I gone my whole life without this website?
gifsofpopularrappers might be my favorite website on the Internet.
Check the link for more.
(via the always reliable David Cho)
Mashup of the Day: The Yip Yips / Sesame Street x “Telephone” mashup you knew was coming is now here.
Does the uncanny synchronization constitute as definitive proof that Lady Gaga is an alien? Why, yes. Yes it does.
[buzzfeed.]
THIS IS BETTER THAN GOOD THIS IS FANTASTIC
Becker, in your music wisdom, what are your thoughts on OkGo's 3rd album?
To be honest, I have never listened to an OK Go album all the way through. My primary experience with them has been through their presence in iPod commercials and brilliant viral YouTube videos.
However, based soley on their most recent music video I can say that I would probably find their newest CD to be pretty enjoyable. It’s hard to say that one of their videos is better or worse than another though, as they are all pretty brilliant. Perhaps I will give OK Go a chance and actually listen to this album.
On the industry side of things, OK Go has given the big middle finger to Capitol/EMI and is now releasing albums on their own label. (story from band’s website here) This seems to have been a result of EMI prohibiting the band’s latest video from being embeddable on other websites. (Lead singer, Damian Kulash Jr. wrote an op-ed about it in the NYT here). Anyway, I think big labels are ruining music right now, and any band who can make it out on their own should do so, so I applaud the band for this decision.
That’s an awful lot of words to not answer your question. Sorry about that.
My friend is working on putting together a pilot episode for his sitcom, Josh Jennings for Congress. Read about it and consider making a donation here.
Becker’s Banter
For the last three academic years, I have had a column in my school’s newspaper, The Torch, entitled “Becker’s Banter.” I write about whatever I want, and sometimes people read it and find it entertaining.
Recently, I realized that I don’t actually have all of these articles on my own computer. Many have been written in The Torch Office. Some have been written on school computers. Some have been written on friend’s computers. Some have been written on computers in hostels in various countries in Europe.
The only place that all of these articles reside is on Zues, the name of our friendly Torch Office server. Currently, I’m an editor for the Torch and have access to this server whenever the building is unlocked. Soon, however, I will graduate, and this will not be the case. So today I took it upon myself to collect all of these articles into a single folder, format them so that they all look the same, name them in a way that makes sense, and upload them to Google Docs.
This ended up taking a few hours, getting all of the articles into Garamond 12 pt (because that’s how I like them), and saving them in YYMMDDBanter-StoryTopic format so that they would sort in chronological order, when placed alphabetically.
Here’s some of what I found (Becker’s Banter, by the numbers, if you will)
- 70 articles published under the name Becker’s Banter (or “Becker’s Bantour” when I was in England).
- 14 written about things that pertain pretty specifically to Valparaiso University
- 13 written about food or drink
- 10 written from abroad
- 9 written about music or musicians
- 6 written in list form, or including lists
- 4 written about iPhone related issues
- 4 written in letter form
- 3 written about weather
- 2 written about apple cider
- 2 written by my father, Michael Becker
- 1 written in Haiku form
- 1 written from a bathroom
This is sloppy calculation, and any of those numbers could be off by one or two.
Anyway, hopefully I’ll find some way to get these out to the public sometime in the near future, whether it be in Tumblr form, a designated website, or perhaps a book. Would anyone buy “The Unabridged Becker’s Banter Collection? What if it included hand-drawn illustrations or other bonus goodies?
Windows Phone 7 Series
Reactions seem to be pretty positive, but my goodness is that name is a mouthful. Above is the first thing that came to mind when I heard the name.
But here are some reactions (looks like this thing is gonna be legit depending on how Android and iPhone devices evolve in the nine months before this comes out):
