V: On Rights

In light of the recent Supreme Court decision, we bring you the climactic scene of Episode 5 as imagined by advocates of individual gun rights

"What was that, Abercrombie?" Donnie yells, pulling his gat. Donnie broods and glares, because that's what one does when one is from the wrong side of the Orange County-Riverside border. He stares down Luke, raising his .357 at the All-American water-polo captain ten paces across the room, waiting for an answer.

Luke reaches around to the back of his designer board shorts, feeling for his piece, when his cocksure stare melts like a lonely Balboa Bar abandoned on the pier at noon.

"Jesus, Luke, do you never do anything right?" a soused Marissa Cooper contributes to the conversation, pulling a 9mm Beretta from the gun compartment of her matching Gucci handbag. "Drop the gun Donnie." Her words turn stern, but her hand can't quite hold the authority, or the straight line.

Seeing his star-crossed love interest once again as a distressed object that could only be saved by his actions, Ryan quickly switches from Brood to Break and pulls his own gun from the signature holster that he wears across his signature wife beater. In Newport, everyone packs heat, but in Chino, everyone lets everyone else know it. Because they gots to represent.

Ryan steadies himself behind the bar; Donny is the only obstacle between he and Luke. Luke is all that stands between Donny and the glass door. The bottle of Skyy was the only line between Marissa and a good night, but she broke through that line.

The Natty Ice is thick on Donny's breath, or as thick as Natty Ice can be. He didn't come here looking for a gunfight. A fight, sure. And yeah, he pulled the first piece of iron, but when it's 1am and you're eight beers and fifty Newporters deep into a party, sometimes these things like a good idea. It doesn't? Well, you're not the one with a gun. God bless the USA.

"What's going on?" Holly walks down the stairs, stumbling up next to Ryan with a comically over-sized shotgun that she must have taken from under her parents' bed from a box labeled "Use in the Event of the Apocalypse or a Democratic Administration." Donnie turns his head to look behind him, keeping his gun ahead on Luke, to see Holly aim the shotgun and almost tip over.

Ryan lowers his weapon and steadies Holly, taking the shotgun from her hands in the process. "You have acquired: The Shotgun" Seth Cohen remarks in his videogame announcer voice. Later, Summer would ask him why he doesn't pack heat. "Summer, my witty banter is all the heat I need." He would die in a gang shoot out on the pier two days later.

As Ryan, is holstering his Colt 45, the glass door slides open. It's Donny's friends. Blustering but without weapons drawn, they burst into the room, "What the hell is going on here Donny? Is this chump bothering-"

But that's as far as he gets, because Marissa's drunkenly itchy trigger finger freaked out and put a slug into Corona Hoodlum #1's shoulder. Immediately, Donny turns to his right and exacts vengeance, cutting a full three seasons out of the life of the show. Luke, in a fit of rage, runs to tackle Donny, because that's what Cro Magnon Man did, but Ryan had already aimed the shotgun at where Donny's chest would have been. Where Luke's head was.

All the while Corona Hoodlum #2 was pulling his sholem, an M-16 that he keeps strapped to his back. Because, you know, there's an inalienable individual right to carry guns. For the protection of a free state. This is our well regulated state militia.

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Is It Over Yet?

Pop Punk has always existed on the border of legitimacy and farce. For every Buzzcocks record, there was an Enema of the State. And for the bands that have always lived on that precipice, such as the Offspring, balancing the tight rope of mainstream acceptance and satisfying the best and worst of their fanbase has led to a variety of comic, terrible, and comically terrible results. The following is perhaps the most perfect of the last.

Show me how to lie
you're getting better all the time
And turning all against the one
Is an art that’s hard to teach

Another clever word
Sets off an unsuspecting herd
And as you step back into line
A mob jumps to their feet

"You're Gonna Go Far Kid." (Offspring - MySpace)



(Alternatively Panic! At The Disco's Myspace, where the album version's lack of an intro makes the point even clearer)

The troubling part of this comparison isn't that the Offspring ripped off Panic! At the Disco, it's that they somehow took the concept of the speak/sing diatribe and made it worse. To start, they copped the theme of deceit and made it even more painfully obvious, turning it from the agonizingly emo to the vacuously vague social criticism of 90's California punk. If there's one thing less interesting than hearing breathy teenage breakup angst, it's angsty teenage Soc 101.

Still, these things might be forgivable for the backbeat, the melody, and the powerchords, because that's pop punk's point, anyways. But that's where the wheels fall off. Assuming you're still reading this having listened to both of these songs, there's not much more I need to say: the vocal phrasing is identical; the only thing keeping the verse drum parts from being carbon copies is Panic's willingness to mix it up a bit, and the emo kids' instrumentation is infinitely more interesting than the Offspring's, which gets through the words with little more than stabbed powerchords. But I suppose finding room for one of the members of the trinity ain't bad. However much I loved Ixnay on the Hombre and Smash in my adolesence, time comes to admit they were never the Buzzcocks.

First there was the unlistenable kitsch of Pretty Fly for a White Guy, then the blatant theft of the most godawful Beatles song, and then a string of forgettable attempts to recapture the cultural zeitgeist. But this is enough, this is where we have to draw the line. This is Offspring's own "Greatest Man That Ever Lived," their Cut the Crap, their Return of Saturn. This is the proof that the band has finally outlived its usefulness and need never be heard from again. Find other projects, fade quietly into that good night, take up needlework or woodcraft. But please: no more Offspring.

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Cartoon Blood

Here at Neon Hustle, we like music. We also like television. Living back in a house with the latter, I bring you the following exploration of that once bold attempt to join the two media. But this ain't yo' momma's MTV. No, this is FNMTV: A liveblog on cartoon blood, one man's immovable hair, and the ethical-cum-aesthetic low point of summer songs.

0:04 - I forgot that Pete Wentz hosts this show. He's wearing a sleeveless hoodie and just introduced a ten second clip of LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out." This is already seeming like a very bad idea.

0:05 - They're running a clip wherein LL Cool J is talking about going to the market as a kid. "I can't work the register, ma!" The message for today's youth: Work might be good for some people, but not if you want to be a star. He's bagging groceries now as a photo op and asking where to put things. If he were a candidate, his questions would be the equivalent of Kerry asking for Swiss on a Philly Cheesesteak. We'll accept elitism from our celebrities, but not from our leaders.

0:09 - Run DMC "Rock Box" Clip. LL Cool J is talking about how rap was blowing up at the time of this clip and how he was partying with Russel Simmons and Madonna when it came out. "Rock Box" was released in 1984. LL Cool J released Radio in 1985.

0:10 - The crowd is cheering for a clip of Pete Wentz stuffing his face with spaghetti in an homage to "Doin' It." So far my enjoyment of this show is directly correlated to the dude's screen time.

0:11 - Video Premiere! It's hard to say what the most distracting part of this experience is: there's the video effect that makes me feel like I'm constantly engaging hyperdrive and the "your baby" being looped through the chorus. The worst is probably the crowd noise randomly piped in during the track. Having come of age in the midst of TRL, I keep thinking the producers are about to cut to the studio. No such luck.

0:15 - They've got a skybox? Tim Kash, the British accented VJ, sits with The Game and James Montgomery, a "music journalist" who resembles Craig Finn, sans 20 years and 60 pounds. And Montgomery just dissed the track! "I didn't see that drive there, I want to see the hunger from the kid who wanted to get out of the supermarket." While it sounds disturbingly like commentary on a basketall halftime show, he's got a point. The crowd booed, and the VJ advised him to watch his back. They're about to cut to commercials, a phrase I use loosely since they just spent thirty seconds talking about how you could use Verizon to be a better MTV consumer, but not before letting us know that She & Him will be coming up soon. Did you know Zooey Deschanel is an actress!



00:20 - Last week, Rihanna played with Maroon 5. Apparently she has a song other than "Umbrella" and justice still hasn't been served on their career.

00:21 - "You may know her from a movie called "Almost Famous." And he is almost famous. Please welcome She & Him." I wonder if Wentz writes his own material. Oh, he's asking her about the actress/singer transition, and him about getting involved with someone making the actress/singer transition... He probably does. Next question is an homage to Almost Famous because, get this, she was in that movie! "Is there a record that did set you free, or that is so influential to you?" If you were wondering, she said Revolver.

The video is unbelievably, adorably, and wonderfully twee. Which makes it all the better when they turn to The Game for the first word: "I just like all the cartoon blood. I figured out a way to get blood into my videos without MTV blurring it out, ya gotta make it cartoon." Montgomery makes the Scar-Jo comparisons and then the VJ continues sucking up to The Game. The dude's got a Dodgers tattoo on right cheek, clearly way cooler than the journo.

It's worth saying that, even beyond the catchy single, great video, and adorable singer/actress, the She & Him record really is quite good. The songwriting is strong, and it's a refreshing throwback in sound and sensibility. Her voice, while far from perfect, is strong when it needs to be and vulnerable in just the way that her songs ask. It's a shame that she's unable to escape the actress narrative, when the more apt comparisons may be to 1920's revivalists The Ditty Bops or still-learing-the-vocals Kaki King.



0:31 - Dark Knight Returns clip instead of immediately bringing out Daughtry. I'm really quite ok with this. Though the clip isn't all that interesting. Heath Ledger shoots some guns and Batman stoically rams a garbage truck. Wentz: "I want to see the Game driving the Batmobile." Ok, the sucking up to the Game is getting a bit much.

0:33 - Fuck, they're rolling the Daughtry clip. The phrase "American Idol" isn't mentioned, but the blue-collar family man makes good is laid on thicker than Pete Wentz's product. Seriously, I don't think I've seen his hair move - it's like Trump Hair or something.

0:35 - Watching Pete Wentz's hair for movement is more interesting than this interview. Daughtry observes: "We can say anything and [the crowd would] be all, "WOOO!"" He's painfully right.

00:39 - Blurring the line between the show and the advertisements. Pete Wentz drives a smart car to go pick up The Game and his entourage. They kick him out, and two guys sit on the gate of the trunk as they drive into the distance. Wentz forlornly asks a local for directions. If this is an ad, it sucks as much as the Daughtry clip. Pete Wentz just claimed Ryan Seacrest as a friend. I don't think Ryan Seacrest would admit to having Ryan Seacrest as a friend.



0:42 - This is the first time I've consciously listened to Daughtry and I'm really wishing I hadn't. This band seems to combine the self-satisfied, over-the-top vocals of Creed with the rhythm section from Nickelback. Their guitar and piano parts fall between the aforementioned and Aerosmith.

Is it wrong to hate on a band while they run a video publicizing the charity work of underappreciated groups and people from across the world? While it's been done before, there are a laundry list of groups that people might never have heard of were it not for this video. Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty Internaional, Urban Compass, Insight Prison Project, Seacology, Surfaid, Room to Read, Homeboy Industries, Keep a Child A Live...



0:49 - I'd keep listing, but the commercial break is over and Katy Perry is on talking about what might be the song of the summer, "I Kissed a Girl." Hilights of the clip, which cuts between shots of her face (cleavage and up) and her hands... on her legs.

"Girls are very girly, we have summer parties and we have choreographed dance moves in pajamas... It's kind of about that. It's like kissing your arm sometimes. We smell very good. We smell like vanilla, watermelons, strawberries. [...] Not trying to be a role model or a posterchild for anything because I'm in the business of rock and roll. I'm in the business of rock and roll... I came here to inspire people to listen to pop music again."

This is one of the worst hit songs ever. There are some that are unlistenable but inexplicably turn to pop culture earworm ("Pop" by N*Sync). There are others that are just plain bad, in the "He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)" way. I'll defer on the latter to the posters and commenters at Feministe:

In popular culture, kissing a woman is only permissible and sanctioned if a woman is already an avowed heterosexual. [...] The icing on the cake comes from Perry’s own objectification of a female subject: “Just wanna try you on / I’m curious for you” and “No, I don’t even know your name / It doesn’t matter / You’re my experimental game / Just human nature”. Now we’re free to dehumanize and sexualize each other into pieces of meat to be sampled, instead of waiting around for a man to do it! [...] This attitude underscores an aggressive masculinity that runs through the song, its beat, and Perry’s singing: “and I liked it” is sung with such defiance. It poses as third-wave feminism with a “girly” but loud-and-proud protagonist, but is really just good, old-fashioned woman-using.

Back to the point, Perry's song is abysmal. It rides its sing-along chorus as far as it will go, but has little else but a story written in lyrics that don't quite scan over a marching electro-drum beat. For someone who claims to be in the business of rock and roll, she doesn't have much faith in the holy trinity of bass, drums, and guitar.

As the show draws to a close, Perry is showered in balloons.

In watching an hour of television, I saw three music videos and one live performance. If I'd gotten to hear The Game's thoughts on Katy Perry, it might have almost been worth it.

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III-IV: Collars

It is entirely coincidental that the posting of the third installment of the series coincided with the conviction, without jail time, of Lee Kun-Hee, former Chairman of Samsung Group. Not that his sentence is big news; such occurrences have become commonplace.

Having cast off the shackles of their colonial oppressors and defined the framework of a free state, our country's landed white forefathers set their sights on the next great set of legal challenges facing an ever-westward expanding America. Willard Hurst's "Law and the Conditions of Freedom" presents the development of legal institutions in 19th century America that a cynic may see concerned as much with promoting a climate conducive to the development of enterprise as the rule of law. In fact, if the latter was a goal, it was perhaps worthwhile only in service of the former. And so the law of torts, of contracts, and of property were developed to help the entrepreneurial souls of these United States fulfill the potential of the land they saw before them. Pristine and uninhabited... though only described by the former prior to being placed in the thrall of industrialization, and only noted as the latter for ignorance or disregard of multitudes of Native Americans. But, yeah, go west, young man!




Episode three of The OC throws the contemporary viewer into a swirl of reference, and a sensation of pop cultural vertigo. Ryan's nemesis is none other than Francis Capra (Eli "Weevil" Navarro) from Veronica Mars, who lays the crime/prison drama hurt on young Mr. Atwood in the form of a fork to the neck. If the wound looks a bit like a vampire bite, you can blame the writer: Buffy expatriate Jane Espensen (Band Candy). The "crime": Ryan is unable to be released to a guardian after being held for questioning in the fire that consumed the Newport Group's latest model home.

Episode four of the series closes with what everyone enjoys the show for most: rash, poorly thought out decisions which cut a clear and tantalizing path to high melodrama. In this case, we have the confluence of Jimmy Cooper's embezzlement of his client's money to pay for his family's lavish lifestyle combined with his total unwillingness to confront his problems directly... until the social event of the year when one of his clients would like a check for his at-this-point embezzled money. Never mind that he could have not shown up, or simply written a bad check considering he was already hemorrhaging cash and looking at 20 years in the joint, but no, he was going to own up to it.



There's been plenty of ink spilled on the place of law in society, whether it has played such a consciously mustache-twirling capitalist role as Hurst portrays and critics of capitalism would accuse, and whether such roles can be normatively categorized for good or for ill. Not only have I yet to even begin my legal education, but these questions go far deeper than a few hundred words in a blog post on a tv show. Still, it's admirable that a primetime high school soap points out what should be obvious and inescapable: that it's all too rare that white collar criminals have to roll the hard eight, and it's far too often that the disadvantaged find themselves on the losing side of the craps game that our legal system can sometimes be.

In abstract terms, we believe justice should be meted out equally - a thief should be treated as a thief. In specific terms, we are willing to carve out exceptions in the name of circumstance and familiarity. But in between, our conception of justice has become so warped that the prospect of a white collar criminal serving jail time is almost impossible to comprehend. Since 2003, we've made steps: but they're more punchlines than warnings. Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, Enron Executives? But by and large, it is far easier to sell America on jailing a man for life for stealing a few video tapes than it is to sell them on defrauding the country and taking its citizenry for millions. After all, if 3 strikes work for baseball, it must work for the criminal justice system.

Perhaps this means that Hurst was wrong - if our legal system has engendered bad business practices, can it really be said that is the course on which it sought to set us? Perhaps the country lost its way, and the protection of markets and enterprise was gradually replaced by the zealous guarding of entrenched monopolies and corrupt actors? Maybe those old, propertied white men had a point when they were focusing on preventing bad people from doing bad things to take advantage of good people, just expanding that notion to business as well as government.

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II: The Greatest Song That Ever Lived

As these pieces were written sequentially, the show's most greivous use of this song was not mentioned in the original draft. Watching the series finale, one is left to wonder if there will ever be a new universal dramatic shibboleth in the vein of the Buckley cover. We can only hope it will be this:

"Jeff is the son of cult songwriter Tim Buckley
Jeff's Song "the last goobye was udesd in the movie vanilla sky
Jeff was born on noember 17, 1966 in Orange County, California."

- Music Guide Subtitles, Episode 2 of Season 1, The OC

These are the optional subtitles that appear while Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" plays in the moments prior to the fiery climax of the second episode of the series - when Marissa Cooper walks into the model home in which Ryan Atwood is living, throws herself at him, only to have herself turned down in what is either the most emotionally mature decision by a sixteen year old juvenile delinquent or what would be the stupidest decision of any man's life. These are also perhaps the stupidest facts to include while this song is playing.

For starters, the song is not a Buckley original, but a cover of a Leonard Cohen song: a fact that has been common knowledge as the track has been used ad naseum by TV producers since they seemingly discovered the track. Perhaps this history also bears mention, in that the the OC is blazing a trail cut by dozens of pioneers before them, most of which also dropped the dramatic ball with their use of the song. There are also the more charitable facts to include: Buckley described his Orange County roots in a Raygun interview as "rootless trailer trash," a characterization which would make Marissa's introductory line, "this song reminds me of you," a bit more sensical. Of course, it would also risk problematizing the concept of the OC as universally perfect and hazard the very premise of the show.

Perhaps the show isn't premised in such an inviolable perfection of the county, but it does (at least at this stage) rely on defining issues of class along distinctly geographic lines. While the OC doesn't deny that there are problems with class in America, it says that these problems are ones of The Riverside County. Perhaps even more importantly, they are ones that come when the Riverside, and the LA, meet the OC, as happens when Seth goes to the LBC in the third episode, only to have his mom's Range Rover tore up. As long as Ryan were to have stayed in Chino, things may not have been great for him, but he could have maintained his path without much interference, aberration of the carjacking aside.

The other tidbit about Buckley the producers neglect to mention in their three point summary is perhaps the most tragic, and the most widely known -- which makes its absence all the more conspicuous. Jeff Buckley died in Memphis, drowning in the Wolf River Tributary of the Mississippi River. Fully clothed, wearing his boots, and singing Zep's "Whole Lotta Love," the thirty year old swam out and disappeared from sight. Maybe this is to what Marissa's enigmatic line was referring, but such subtext is way too good for this show.

Or consider this explanation: Marissa attempts suicide in a swirl of emotions brought on by her parents divorce, her ill-fated romance with Luke, and her then un-requited love for Ryan, by whom she is reminded of this song. Fall Out Boy named the song "Hum Hallelujah" after the Jeff Buckley cover since it was playing in Pete Wentz's car when he attempted suicide. Pete Wentz parlayed the commercial success of Fall Out Boy into the creation of a personal brand that has evangelized the aesthetics of the contemporary wave of emo-punk -- or mall-emo; emo; pop-punk; deriviative, uninventive and misogynistic crap; whatever you choose to call it. The OC turned its position as a cultural arbiter into a venue for the first bridgings of "indie" and "mainstream" culture from the perspective of the mainstream. That is to say, while underground scenes have cried cooptation for decades, and have broken to varying degrees (hip-hop, new-wave), it was the advent of the OC that started the groundswell of mainstream journalistic consensus that indie was " in" beyond the post-Nirvana search for suitable college radio acts. Now, indie was in because it was indie.

Perhaps, Marissa Cooper is foreshadowing her eventual role in the cultural landscape. Perhaps Marissa Cooper is Pete Wentz.

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I: Forward, Into the Breach

Inspired by timing, geography, and our friends, what follows is the first in a series.

Phantom Planet first skyrocketed to fame on the identity of their drummer, Wes Anderson's beloved Jason Schwartzman. One of the bands to synthesize LA club buzz with nationwide nerd appreciation on the heels of Rushmore, countless records were sold into the hands of fans soon to be disappointed with the workmanlike attempt to crib the Attractions without the dynamism of Elvis Costello. That is, of course, but for the lead single: California.

The song was released in November of 2002, but hit the bigtime after McG picked it as the theme song to Fox's summer premiere blockbuster series, The OC. For the first episode, it is a transition piece, playing as Ryan moves from Chino to Newport Beach. The carefree, echoing track starts as he packs his bag, fleeing his mom and abusive step father, and futilely seeks refuge with friends. Pulling his public defender's card from his pocket and sticking it in his mouth, not unintentionally like a cigarette, Sandy Cohen arrives once more as the savior in an incongruous black BMW.

For all of Phantom Planet's faults, and all the qualms one can have with a pop song, this track is a fantastic piece of work. The piano and guitar build a surprisingly solid base until the drums come in with a casually powerful backbeat under the second verse, and the the chorus is among the best reasons why stereos were put in cars and roads were built down the California coast.

But the 101 doesn't go from Chino to Newport, and that isn't even the biggest problem here. "California" is a song about coming back, and the OC is a show about being anywhere but. Despite any overtures toward similarity and common human experience, it is a show driven by conflicts bred by difference. "Welcome to the OC, Bitch."



It used to be that residents of Orange County, CA would describe their origins to foreigners by some combination of landmarks. Los Angeles, Disney Land, San Diego, Not in Florida. This show had the remarkable effect of putting a place on the map, no disrepect to Colin and Jack. From here on out, the response to identifying your origins behind the Orange Curtain was no longer, "Where's Orange County?" but "Do you know Seth and Summer?"

That isn't exaggeration. I've been asked a variant of that query on multiple occasions: by Brits, Irish, Spaniards, Thais, Serbs, Tenesseans. Mostly with the same wink and self-aware smirk that belies the stupidity of the question, but with the question nonetheless.

We are nearly five years from the premiere of the Oc. A show that began the shift toward the year-round prime-time premiere scheduling, but that couldn't stop the onslaught of reality-television on the networks. A show that forever altered the self-perceived and therefore only reality of the place in which I lived for eighteen years. A show that today isn't even carried in my hometown's Blockbuster. A show that is perhaps due for a critical reevaluation, or perhaps one that can occupy me for twenty seven episodes and two months before I start law school.

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Hagiography for the Hostile

George Carlin died of heart failure Sunday in Santa Monica, California. He mattered.

Our last true living link to the time of revolutionaries like Bruce and Pryor, he possessed a decidedly more intellectual lean than either yet neither man’s trappings of lifestyle affectations. We seem prone, in our least optimistic times, to ask what could have been but for Bruce’s casual-turned-consuming drug use (a predictable result of the naïve Beats’ junk affectation and, arguably, listening to jazz) or Pryor’s surprising expiration at the age of 65 (the inevitable result of such prolonged use of heavy narcotics and, arguably, those movies with Gene Wilder.) We had such a relic among us for all those years, and a man who stayed long enough to see more than one boundary to push in a lifetime. Of all the icons to inspire so many generations of comedy writers, Carlin seems the most immediately traceable to our modern “alternative” sensibilities, and he can also be remembered as a life lived in example to his philosophical descendents.

In all these ensuing decades of hack pun-smiths and observational retreaders coming to typify our expectation of comedians, but Carlin’s routines were not only clever and utterly original those years ago, but remarkable in their acuity and economy even today, defining a style truly unique from his peers and imitators. At his best (and he was always at his best, right up through his final performance just one week before his passing) he could proudly call himself the finest bullshit detector we’ve ever had, and to George Carlin that was a responsibility. Where imitation has lead so many to comics to (lucrative) mediocrity bereft of legitimately dangerous insight, Carlin never lost his edge… or his nerve. Equal parts performance artist and dedicated semanticist, and he remained every bit as attuned and committed to his roles as an Andy Kauffman or Umberto Ecco. The vanguard of all enemies of the status quo, Carlin spent a career in our invented social covenant of language and put our skeletons out to bleach in the sun. His methods of subversion were both novel and precise, and his most memorable works sprang not only from the absurdities of the things we’ve experienced, but the very ways in which we talk about them.

But contrary to what we’d like to think, commentary isn’t always activism. You have to earn the distinction of having ever changed anything, and Carlin won his bona fides many times over. A pierced longhair in the button-downed entertainment industry of the 60s and 70s, one of the only outspoken atheists to remain in the public eye through the “moral majority” uprisings of the 80s (and again in the 2000s), and a vital source of anti-institutionalism through the new century, he can be pointed to as someone who has definitively and profoundly altered not only popular culture, but the nature of American public discourse well beyond that as well. And, of course, Carlin also has a badge of honor that none of whom we consider “edgy” comics today ever will- his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” bit was so damned good it was played before the justices of United States Supreme Court.

In recent years we’ve seen the departures of the only voices of dissent to have ever made any difference: Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, and now perhaps our last great critic of convention, all in an era when we need them at their most volatile in an all-too urgent way. We’ve spent so long in numbing self-delusion that his clarity of vision could only be called miraculous, and his willingness to share it was among the closest things I’ve ever known to a promise of redemption that I could believe in. Before the official canonization, let me declare his nomination here: in our shared cultural mythology, George Carlin is our saint of words.

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The Middleman: Season 1, Episode 1, "The Pilot Episode Sanction"

They say that TV is a writer’s medium, and based on The Middleman, they’re right. Airing each Monday this summer on ABC Family (you can also catch the episode's online stream here), The Middleman is the latest example of an absurdly enjoyable, genre-bending show finding a home in the hinterlands of cable television (following AMC’s Breaking Bad and Mad Men). Essentially a cocktail comprising the campiness of Doctor Who and the machinegun dialogue of Gilmore Girls, The Middleman is probably the only thing, in any audiovisual medium anywhere, daring enough to twist a syntactic disaster (“If there's one thing I hate more than scientists trying to take over the world, it's scientists who twist innocent primates with computer-enhanced mind control to live out their sick and perverted fantasies of criminal power”) into a legitimate chuckle. Twice.

“The Pilot Episode Sanction” doesn’t mince words or time in setting the show’s tone. Wendy Watson (Natalie Morales) is an art school graduate working as a temporary secretary in a bio-engineering firm. Sitting against a huge glass window, she’s deflecting calls from her mother and customers while behind the window, a storm’s a brewin’. Eventually a totally lame (in the best sense of the word) body-part monster breaks through the window, ensnaring Wendy. She fights back, not in desperation but resignedly, in a way that sort of suggests that since she doesn’t have anything else to do, why not fight this CGI monster threatening her life?

Ultimately she’s rescued by the eponymous Middleman (Matt Keeslar), a Steve Rogers look/soundalike (even complete with the gee-whizzes and the shucks and gollys) who doesn’t know or particularly care why he’s been tapped by an unknown power to fight back the tide of the superweird. From there it’s a quick step to the formula. He’s impressed with her cool, she needs a job, they vow to work together and kick some tail.

There’s a lot to like here. The jokes work both intellectually (as with Wendy’s boyfriend reluctantly dumping her because his film teacher says he needs more pain in his life) and physically (MM torturing a prisoner with a glass of milk). As mentioned before, the dialogue is crazy fast, but if Morales sometimes has trouble with it, she’s still great at playing the slightly bored, usually unimpressed heroine. Keeslar is just as good. He thinks Jughead is a real hoot. He’s sarcastic, yet strangely ingenuous. He doesn’t curse (except when he does), and he seems totally cool with the fact that some shadowy agency provides him with gadgetry and capital, but never explains why.

Of course, not everything works, as is the case with every pilot (even the greatest show ever, The Wire, had some issues with establishing D’Angelo in its opening episode). Wendy’s roommates are pretty useless, particularly the dude with a guitar whose lexicon consists entirely of song lyrics. Her activist roommate isn’t any better, but at least she skewers a lot of the absurd pretensions underpinning the “activists” I’ve met in Berkeley. There are some minor quibbles, too. Her apartment is waaay too big and cushy (even if she’s squatting in it) for an indefinite temp to afford, and the same can be said for her wardrobe and Xbox.

But the rest of the episode was excellent, from the hilariously fake gorilla suits to the black-and-white credits sequence (particularly the image at the end, with MM holding an umbrella and Wendy in a scuba mask). I’m not sure the show can maintain such a zany tone every week—the show is so layered and dense, it can’t be easy to turn in a script every week. On the other hand, I’m not sure how much material was lifted straight from the source material (showrunner and creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach first published The Middleman as a comic book) and how much is new stuff created just for TV.

I honestly haven’t been so pleased with a pilot since Reaper. We’ll see how things go from here, but now I’ve got something to look forward to on Monday nights.

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Live Blog Listening Party: Stay Positive by The Hold Steady

While we at Neon Hustle certainly esteem each other’s opinions, we’re by no means monolithic in our likes and dislikes. Even if we tend to agree or disagree on the specific quality of something, oftentimes the reasons for those assessments are at complete odds. So when a band we all admire (for predictably different reasons) releases a new album, we're of course going to try and make sense of it all.

The Hold Steady will issue their fourth LP, Stay Positive, in July on Vagrant Records. One of the most anticipated new releases of 2008 (at least in our camp), we’ve consequently wasted no time in assembling. What follows are our opinions of the album—biased in orientation, baseless in gestation, and bellicose of argument—as produced in real time listening to Stay Positive. Our missives have been edited only for length, coherency, and to mask the scent of three budding alcoholics.

Into the breach...

*********

Brendan: Any things to say about The Hold Steady or Stay Positive before we begin? Thoughts, expectations, etc?

Darryl: As a general thought, I have enough faith in Craig Finn as an artist that I was willing to put in the effort to work through some tracks that irked me at first (like “One for the Cutters”) and at this point I'm a pretty big fan of the album. I'm not yet sure where I put it overall in their work.

Steven: It’s not as good Boys and Girls in America, certainly, but that album was pretty freaking spectacular. It's strange, the Hold Steady sort of assumed the mantle of being the voice of America's youth with Boys and Girls, and this album seems a very concentrated reaction against that.

Brendan: In terms of literally using their age to reconnect with adolescent experience, this seems a more overtly pop-punk record. But my initial reaction is that I immediately connected with a higher percentage of songs on Stay Positive than any other Hold Steady album.

Steven: Okay, well let's go.

TRACK 1: “Constructive Summer”

Darryl: The unreconstructed pop-punk fan in me adores this track. So does the rest of me, but that part especially.

Steven: Yeah, I'm a total sucker for unadulterated optimism, which this song has in spades.

Brendan: "Constructive Summer" marks the first Hold Steady track with backing vocals by Lucero's Ben Nichols, who guests on 3 tracks.

Darryl: Wait, he's somewhere other than here and “Magazines”?

Steven: I didn’t even know he was on this track! The only time Nichols ever distinguishes himself at any point in this record is in "Magazines".

Brendan: Here's my problem: people seem to like the shout-along choruses that started in earnest with "Chips Ahoy!", but I think the band is underselling itself by not letting any other member of the band/guest compliment Finn with a true backing vocal. Nichols sings in his lower register the whole time and he's absolutely buried in the mix.

Darryl: I think the other vocalist is a false need. Yes, there are amazing bands with great second vocalists (Saint Mick Jones?) but I by no means think they need to define the band. Even sing-along songs can work with layered vocals by a single singer.

Moreover, I think the inclusion of a second vocalist with presence risks diluting the impact of a band whose identity is in so many ways defined by the consistency of Finn's gravel. Insomuch as second vocalists come in, they fill specific needs (“Chillout Tent,” “Constructive Summer”). I dig.

Brendan: So why even have the guest vocal then? What specific need is filled here? I mean, Nichols has a unique enough voice to be used well, but he really seems noticeably buried in this mix. Like, it stands out that the response vocal is so low.

Darryl: Could the story in “Chillout Tent” be told as well by Finn? Maybe, but the fresh voice adds so much to it. On this track, I think it's a matter of creating a dynamic that follows the sort of band/concert/summer/experience evoked by the song. I can almost envision Ben leaning into a mic at a live show to sing this, and I think that's what it's supposed to sound like.

Brendan: I do have another point quickly if we're off that one. What's the threshold on Minneapolis shoutouts? The "double whiskey coke no ice" lyric in "Constructive Summer" is, in a song otherwise not actively acknowledged to be set in Minnesota, is a reference to Dillinger Four.

Darryl: I appreciated it. And I appreciated Dillinger Four. It's subtle, which is nice.

Brendan: The band is from fucking Brooklyn . Pick a loyalty already. At some point, you fail to be from your hometown.

Darryl: Says the man who reps Texas but still has the "I Love the OC" shirt.

Brendan: But why is Brooklyn not a part of their mythology?

Steven: Inertia?

Brendan: Of course, Newton! What a fool I've been!

Steven: Seriously, if you're going to be a hyper self-referential band, you have to call back to your old albums. And for whatever reason, Finn sang first about Minnesota. That was what, 10 years ago now?

Brendan: More than that if you count Lifter Puller, which I do.

Darryl: Whether conscious or not, there's always a degree of resistance to change. Which in some ways is representative of some of their characters, and in other ways simply a product of growing up and not being quite willing to let go.

Do we want to move on to “Sequestered in Memphis”?

Brendan: After this: “Constructive Summer” is so far is the #2 best opening track on any album this year. Because it rocks face. That is all.

TRACK 2: “Sequestered in Memphis”

Darryl: I had my doubts about this track when it premiered, but I've since come around to everything about it. The story, the characters, the sound, the instrumentation.

Brendan: This is Nichols’ second track.

Steven: I'd have never known.

Darryl: When you talk about them addressing a new range of experiences, is this one of the tracks you're talking about?

Steven: Yeah, this is certainly part of that. It’s the first time any of Finn's protagonists deals with the fallout from their actions.

Darryl: Exactly!

Brendan: I don’t know about that. He's flippant about the "consequences".

Steven: Sure, but even if the protagonist is dismissive of those consequences, he's still dealing with them if only because he’s being questioned by the police. The acceptance of those consequences comes later in the album, which we’ll get to. It’s a soft-build up, but an important change in the usual HS narrative.

Darryl: I think it's as much about the context as anything else. "Reality" or "the law" or whatever is an abstract or perhaps nonexistent entity in other tracks.

Brendan: "Do you think I'm that stupid? / Well look, what the hell, I'll tell my story again …" This guy doesn't give a shit; you’ve got nothing on him.

Darryl: It bears mention that even if the same kind of character is still dodging the same kind of issues, the story is being told from a different perspective than usual, which I think is a notable difference. (This might be Gideon in twenty years.)

Steven: It's THE noticeable difference, in my mind. I completely agree that the character's paradigm hasn't shifted at all. But, again, the previous consequences were usually detoxing in some way or another. This dude's got a shitstorm of problems coming his way beyond “my head hurts”.

Brendan: In any event, as the only one of us who has lived in both Texas and the Memphis metropolitan area, I am tempted to make this my banner HS song. I probably would too, if I didn't place a horrible stigma on first-singles from albums.

Steven: You could do worse. This is a kick-ass tune. For instance, you could choose....

Brendan: Uh oh

TRACK 3: “One for the Cutters”

Steven: … this one. We’re entering the two-song doldrums of the album.

Darryl: It's such a drastic shift, and it references back to something altogether different both in style and era from the first tracks.

Brendan: I’ll bite. I love this track. Go off.

Darryl: First listen: Too long, weird instrumentation, your songs are NOT sing-along songs!

Steven: The harpsichord is cloying. It's too long. And Finn’s first foray into economic/social justice just feels false to me.

Brendan: Tell me why "When one townie falls in the forest does anyone notice" aren’t the best lyrics on the record.

Steven: It’s didactic.

Brendan: Ah, but why isn't this growth? I mean, he's spent how many years now playing on the middle-to-lower class sandbox? Previously, the only upper-class characters were there to score, and we get that.

Darryl: A friend of mine was a big fan of Separation Sunday, but found Boys and Girls too "sing along song" for her tastes. Of course, she reads a lot of Joyce and lived in Greece for a while. She doesn't love HS for the Springsteen drenched opening of “Stuck Between Stations,” or the chorus of "You Can Make Him Like You." She liked the fact that Finn could tell a story with words, punctuated by music, like nobody else these days. That's what SS did, and that's what this song does. Awkwardly, it puts its musical adventurism totally in service of the story.

With this song, if I listen to the music, I want to tear out my headphones. If I hear the words, I'm pretty much hooked.

Brendan: I love the harpsichord. Why is the instrumentation not rewarded?

Darryl: Because it sounds like a troubadour traveling through Sherwood Methampheta-Forest. This is not a great song. But it's not "The Greatest Man that Ever Lived" either.

Steven: So why are you so taken with it, Brendan?

Brendan: This song, to me, is when Stay Positive hooks me. It’s lyrically engaging, and if you can't take harpsichord, I understand. But if you like the sound, this is an exceptionally well paced track, and Franz gets double credit for the rising piano scale.

Steven: Yeah, the piano is fantastic.

Brendan: If you like the piano, recognize that it is a direct foil to the harpsichord. You like it because the melodic work is already being done in another register!

Darryl: I like this song for the characters it creates and where it puts them. I like the sound insomuch as it carries me into a mildly unsettled feeling that I think is something key to the story. The Stranglers were a post-punk band, but they never had the dancey-ness of New Order or the heart on the sleeve emotion of the Cure, but what made them interesting is how they created sweeping, dark, and occasionally operatic songs that were drenched in reverb, experimented with synthesizers and other instrumentation, and were dark in the most pathetically 15 year old deadjournal way, but were still interesting because they held you with their melodies and their ideas.

What ultimately gets me, though, is that I never liked the Stranglers that much. And I don't like this song this much, even if it's got some incredibly redeeming qualities.

That's pretty much all I wanted to get out there. And also that I don't really think I'd call it well paced.

TRACK 4: “Navy Sheets”

Steven: Continuing with the theme of "totally wasted backup vocalists," that's Patterson Hood you can barely hear on this track.

Darryl: Continuing my theme of not knowing that a backup vocalist was brought on...

Brendan: This record has a weak as hell mix.

Steven: I only know it’s Hood because of the band’s website. How did you know about Nichols?

Brendan: His voice is more distinct, plus there was the promo material.

Darryl: Also, Brendan stalks Lucero.

Brendan: Not since That Much Further West, thanks.

Steven: That was the one album Darryl recommended to me! No wonder I dismissed them.

Darryl: Damn, my bad. I can't remember when I'd have put that as my Lucero pick. I like that album, but I'm not sure I'd have ever put it over Tennessee as an intro.

And is Is it safe to say that, given the digression, that no one has overwhelming opinions on this track?

Steven: Yup.

Brendan: We just spent the whole of "Navy Sheets" talking about another band!

Darryl: I don't know what this song reminds me of.

Brendan: It reminds me of the re-done CGI in the Star Wars re-releases of the late 90s.

Hey guys, if I ever meet George Lucas, remind me to punch him in the junk

Steven: It reminds me that I want to skip this track whenever it comes on.

TRACK 5: “Lord, I’m Discouraged”

Steven: Craig Finn said this album was about growing up, and this is most clear-cut example of that. It’s definitely the album’s highlight.

Darryl: I figured that would be your take. Given your DBT appreciation and affinity for this sort of song, this was written for you.

Steven: Yeah, I’m predictable.

Darryl: And probably right.

Steven: I can't think of a single fault with it. Seriously, a copy of this song should be buried in a time capsule or sent into space or something, just as evidence of the worthiness of human endeavor in the 21st century.

Brendan: Even though Kubler goes to the finger tapping in the 4th minute? Seriously, is the guitar solo worth a fucking thing anymore?

Steven: I'd say absolutely, but then I'm a DBT fan

Darryl: I'm not sure the guitar solo can really exist as an independent entity anymore. Especially with a guitar solo like that, you can't help but be reminded of every other shredder to do the same, or some similar thing, before it. Hair metal ruined any stretch of notes that fast and that long for future generations.

Steven: So does that mean I'm a dinosaur? Because I’m a total sucker for guitar solos.

Darryl: No, it just means you're not as jaded. This song really is fantastic. I think I’m willing to indulge the guitar solo in the sense that it seems to fit in a bizarre, depressed way.

Brendan: Someone tell me what this story is about.

Steven: It's a guy with an ambiguous relationship with a girl who's clearly on the downward spiral, praying for her salvation. So it's the first ever HS protagonist outside the prism of the usual lowlifes.

I think that guitar solo is there just to make sure that we know the guy hasn't given up all hope. In the first couple of verses he’s just listing off all the things gone wrong, but after that solo, the tenor of his confession changes to one where he puts the resolution in the hands of God, who wouldn’t handle the situation any worse than he has. There’s something powerful in that.

Brendan: That last line might also be the admission that he's completely moved on. He hoped she's alright because she's not in his life to watch over anymore.

Steven: Oooh, I like that, even if I’m not sure I totally agree.

TRACK 6: “Yeah Sapphire”

Steven: This is a fucking great song, even if it’s pretty redolent of “Constructive Summer,” musically speaking.

Brendan: Only slower and not as propulsively interesting. Nothing here speaks to my 16 year old self, except the Sacto shoutout, where I was born and hope never to return to.

Steven: I thought we had decided this album was beyond the 16 year olds? Anyway, this is a pretty cookie-cutter HS song, but there’s a ripping line I’ve totally latched on to: “Dreams they cost money, but money costs some dreams.” I also think its tempo works great after “Lord, I’m Discouraged”.

Brendan: I never agreed that this wasn’t for “The Kids.”

Darryl: Structurally, this could be a sing-along. It has all the makings of the Boys and Girls tracks that put us in that place, but it's more restrained. I'm not sure if that's intentional or whether they swung for the fence and missed.

Brendan: Is Boys and Girls really a sing-along record? I sing along to “Chips Ahoy!” and “You Can Make Him Like You”, but is that the REAL HS?

Darryl: I don’t know if there’s a “real” HS. I think there's a continuum of evolution, I don't think they're static.

Steven: Is “sing-along” a pejorative term for you guys?

Brendan: No, I like sing-alongs, but not without a defined secondary vocal presence (see “Magazines”). But I consider a straight ahead rock song that I can sing along with to be an unevolved version of what I used to like, back before I realized that I couldn’t mute every other chord effectively enough to play ska.

TRACK 7: “Both Crosses”

Brendan: Worst song on the album?

Steven: This is a very dense track, lyrically speaking, that is frankly beyond me without access to the lyrics. With that caveat, it’s pretty bad, but what makes it so? The banjo doesn’t help things, I know that.

Darryl: The indulgent instrumentation and dense wall of sound.

Brendan: Are Finn's lyrical pretensions towards Catholicism an affectation at this point? Do they serve a purpose beyond saying, “I went to Boston College!”?

Darryl: I think Catholicism is a crucial element of some of his characters.

Brendan: Ah, but this is not a character-driven record.

Darryl: Not in the broader sense, but I think it's still stories about people, and still very directly so.

Brendan: But without the context of the other characters.

Darryl: You mean across the whole album/catalog?

Brendan: Yeah. There is no connect on this album’s characters. It’s not a story record.

Darryl: I think that's true - and in the sense that the characters could sometimes be drawn without Catholicism and be no less full, I think it can sometimes be a crutch for him.

TRACK 8: “Stay Positive”

Darryl: The pacing on this album is really great.

Steven: Yeah, we've been listening to this thing for about two hours, and that's the one thing that's struck me most about it. There's really only one off note ("One for the Cutters").

Brendan: So, is this one a reach-out to the kids? You’ve got shoutouts to Youth of Today and 7 Seconds.

Darryl: Only if you reach out to the kids these days with references to bands that started in the 80s.

Brendan: Ah, but the throwback shit is popular with kids (like me).

Darryl: True, but the song rags on the actual youths of today (not the band) pretty heavily. “The kids are too skinny, the kids are gonna have kids of their own, etc...” It seems like it’s looking at the scene by looking back.

Also, this is Stay Positive’s reference-every-other-HS-track-ever song.

Steven: "Stay positive" the song is to Stay Positive the album as that long guitar solo was to "Lord I'm discouraged": bit of levity before the resignation and fatalism set in (in the album’s case, the last three tracks).

TRACK 9: “Magazines”

Steven: Wherein we finally meet Ben Nichols.

Brendan: Somebody please tell me why "Magazines" shouldn’t be a hit?

Steven: I'm actually surprised that this wasn't the first single.

Brendan: This is the most adult of any relationship Finn seems to write about. Not to say middle aged, but characters with real jobs and the same leanings they had when they were 17. You know, like anybody else.

Darryl: I think that's pretty accurate; it's definitely a lot closer than anything on Separation Sunday, but I'm still put off by some of the lyrics. “Hits her like a tambourine,” "I know you're pretty pissed, I hope you'll still let me kiss you." It's this sort of lyricism more than any other factor that reminds me of the mall-emo genre. There's a casual misogyny and a dynamic of objectification that's eerily reminiscent of Fall Out Boy, Brand New and company. Which isn't to say it's a bad representation of that character, but it weirds me out.

Brendan: I'm just saying, these are as fully formed as any characters on the record. Why can't their experience be taken as a matured relationship?

Darryl: Because I think after the first verse, the character of the woman isn't really defined by much apart from the way in which she's pursued by the men.

Brendan: Is “Magazines” the best song on the album?

Darryl: I don't think it's the best song on the album, but I do think it's probably the best single on the album.

Brendan: Do either of you have significant issues with the hypothetical of if the album ended now? Would you miss the latter songs?

Darryl: No. It was a great album up to this point, and resolves pretty well here.

Brendan: And how can you not love that “Magazines” ends with the exact note as “Holland 1945”?

TRACK 10: “Joke About Jamaica”

Steven: So does your previous observation make these next two tracks superfluous? Because I really like the narrative conceit of this one. I think it's pretty important to the album, both as a warning against superficial self-worth, and a pretty sardonic take on ossifying in a youth-dominated culture.

Brendan: Explain.

Steven: It's about a groupie who thinks she's hot shit till she gets older, at which point the bands won’t have anything to with her. So she gets bitter: “The boys in the band, no they’ll never be stars.” It doesn’t really add anything to the album thematically, but it reinforces the themes. And it's very listenable.

Darryl: But being written from the perspective of a woman, I think it is a different take.

Steven: Yeah, but I think there's also a bit of transference there. The fears of age squeezing you out of a youth-dominated scene are probably front and center for Finn and Co.

Brendan: Why the marked lack of Tad's leads? This is the first track to feature them since "Lord, I’m Discouraged". I remember when I first started listening to HS, Kubler’s guitar was all over 'em. But I think there are 2 guitar solo tracks on this entire album.

Darryl: I think the role of the guitar changes pretty significantly in the style of the last few songs. With Boys and Girls there was a pretty significant shift to other instruments, though.

Brendan: I half want to enter a philosophical deathmatch with Steven over guitar solos. But okay, let’s move on.

TRACK 11: “Slapped Actress”

Darryl: What's the best album closer HS have done?

Brendan: “How a Resurrection Really Feels”

Darryl: Yeah, that's always been my pick, too. Both for what it does for the album and for the song itself just kicking ass.

Steven: “Killer Parties”

Darryl: That was my second choice. I think “Slapped Actress” is third, with “Southtown Girls” coming in last.

Steven: Considering “Southtown Girls” is a pretty strong track, that's still some high praise. They certainly know how to close out albums, in other words.

Brendan: That, or they have a high percentage of good songs equally worthy of praise.

Darryl: I dunno, I don't think “Killer Parties” would have worked nearly as well had it been placed anywhere else on the record. “Southtown Girls” is the exception in that I think it may have been better somewhere else.

Brendan: Let’s wrap this up, then. Best songs: "Magazines,” "Lord, I’m Discouraged," "One for the Cutters"

Darryl: “Lord I'm Discouraged,” “Slapped Actress” and “Constructive Summer”

Steven: “Lord, I’m Discouraged,” “Constructive Summer” and “Sequestered in Memphis”. So there’s a general consensus about the best songs, with the obvious exception being “One for the Cutters”.

Brendan: So is this album a progression? A regression? A holding pattern?

Darryl: I think it's a progression. If you look at Separation Sunday and Almost Killed Me as records heavily focused on stories and words, and at Boys and Girls as their first step towards a more musically adventurous band, I think it's hard to see this as anything but a further progression down that line. There’s a question as to whether it's been a success—there weren't the missteps of “One for the Cutters” on Boys and Girls—but I don't think it's regressing or holding. I think they're pushing themselves for sure.

End Transmission

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The Big Laydown

It started in late 2006, with the curio announcement that Scarlett Johansson- yes, that Scarlett Johansson- was to make an album. What’s more, she was to make an album of Tom Waits covers. Eye rolling turned into a sustained level of interest, which was piqued with the accompanying details. Dave Sitek, musical backbone of the adored TV on the Radio, had been tapped to create a backdrop for the assuredly surreal sounds to come. Cameos and collaborators piled up with each infrequent press release, along with rumors and gossip, whisperings of Ziggy Stardust sightings in the bayou, and speculation as to whether or not Johansson could actually, you know, sing. More than a year and a half later, Anywhere I Lay My Head arrived.

The average music fan has probably heard some of mostly the same criticisms. The record certainly has its rough spots, and yeah, the lows are pretty low indeed- especially the painfully-obvious music box on “I Wish I Was in New Orleans” and the hideously juvenile dance track train-wreck that is “I Don’t Want to Grow Up.” But it is also true that the highs are actually quite close to… stunning. Sitek’s now-trademark percussive drone, highlighted by string and woodwind flourishes, pair beautifully with some of the melodic highpoints of Waits’ career, which manage yoke the sometimes meandering and abstract tendencies of Sitek’s own band to some plain perfectly-written songs. While Johansson’s immature contralto stands out repeatedly in the record as a glaring point of weakness, it is, at the very least, an interesting diversion in places and occasionally manages to reach peaks simply not suggested possible by her previous known work at the mic.

It turns out, that we could reverse the billing on the closing duet “Who Are You” and have a decent case that Tunde Adebimpe alone would have made this a terrific TVoTR release. Consider his tracks as nothing more than a collaboration between him and Sitek, and we could easily extrapolate Bowie's sample into an album we’d call at least 3.4 times better than Heathen and proceed to argue its relative merits alongside Scary Monsters as his last good albums. In all actuality, pretty much the entire first half of the album (up to and including the co-written Johansson/Sitek original) is an unqualified success. Johansson’s taste in covers material is vindicated by some long-overdue attention paid to a couple of Waits’ should-be classics. The Brooklyn all-star backing band cameos (members of TV on the Radio, Celebration and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) exceed their ill-defined expectations and produce some great instrumentals. Bowie remains convincingly Bowie-like (in shades of Lou’s “Satellite of Love” no less) and Sitek absolutely produces the shit out of everything. Then we drink some lemonade, maybe watch Manhattan again, and head home happy in the early summer night.

Yet although most reviewers have claimed pretenses wanting to of give the album a fair shake, everybody seems to hedge against venturing any kind of strong sentiment as to the ultimate quality of these eleven tracks. The resulting critical response has come in deceivingly mediocre ratings and disingenuously superficial assessments. No attempt is made by anybody to reconcile the phenomenon of why this album, once a nexus of fairly intense fetishism by more than a few people, has been met with such absolute indifference upon its arrival. Given the principles involved and lopsided results, it seems that there would be at least a little spirited debate about Anywhere I Lay My Head. Yet a glance around the media reveals that it’s not just that the major outlets aren’t into it, but the fact is that nobody seems to be into it, and the question of why has consumed me...

Right around the time that anticipation of the Scar-Jo record had mounted, another musical debut by an indie-crush-worthy actress arrived with little fanfare. She & Him is a collaboration between Zoey Deschanel, she of healthy filmography and radar-straddling profile, and M. Ward, he of notably consistent (and Pitchfork-approved) folk-inflected solo career. The two have produced, by all accounts a lovely little collection of songs entitled Volume One, consisting of both covers (by the likes of key Ward influences Smokey Robinson and the Beatles) and originals credited to Deschanel and produced by Ward. With a studio band assembled by Ward and featuring members of the Decemberists and Devotchka, the duo manages to recall the pop highlights of obvious idols Tammy Wynette and Patsy Cline. Despite a few missteps, like the poorly-placed slowdown of “Take it Back” and a completely useless afterthought of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” (seriously), the album is full of affecting, hook-filled songs that know when it’s better to quit than risk going too far out of their depth.

At a loss for explaining the different receptions for Johansson’s and Deschanel’s respective efforts, my mind wandered among a number of possibilities. Obviously, the subject of novelty in music has been on my mind recently. When and why a given project may be dismissed out of hand while another is celebrated for whatever reasons still evades me. What I have come to understand, in a very “hipster-bashing is a totally hipster thing to do” kind of way, is that coolness-as-commodity requires a level of sub-cultural protectionism. This is often taken (rightly or wrongly, but mostly rightly) as exclusionary and elitism by the world at large. And, for people who spend as much time listening to and thinking about music as I do, the single biggest conceit we seem to make for our obsession is the lonely life of being a definitive arbiter of our own tastes.

Of course, these standards become compounded by the fact of indie-rock being a still largely male-dominated society, begging the engagement of forces beyond rationale, and sometimes bordering on misogyny. Scarlett was everybody’s dream girl from Ghost World through Lost in Translation. Now we respond to the unmistakable signifiers of her being finally and totally co-opted by the mainstream: appearing in lousy Bruckheimer summer blockbusters, going bicoastal (and unabashedly “Hollywood”) and, most painfully of all, dating Ryan Reynolds. As such, these recent albums are more than anything a referendum on the state of the people who made them. Anywhere I Lay My Head isn’t especially bad, but the collective yawn it has elicited is our final proof that Scarlett Johansson just isn’t cool anymore. Divorcing our opinion of the woman’s work from any ability to care about it is the only mechanism we have to protect ourselves from the fact that such an undertaking high likelihood of being an abject failure. To invest ouselves now risks seeing Scarlett make a joke of herself- and, by extension, us- in the most demoralizing way possible: on the E! Network between comments about her upcoming role in yet another shitty (and profitable) movie.

It is now abundantly clear that only thing Ms. Johansson could have done to change anybody’s opinion of her record was to be less famous when she made it. In the hands of an unknown (preferably male) quantity, we’ll not only forgive such a “novelty” project, but applaud it heartily, as in the case of the Dirty Projectors, whose Rise Above was a fixture on every cool kid’s favorites of 2007 list. A collective based in the consensus Center of the Universe (Williamsburg, apparently) has every advantage to produce- without fear of reprisal- a Black Flag covers abomination that remains, nine months after its release, as flimsy and frequently unlistenable as it did the first time I ignored it.

Likewise, Deschanel gets a pass for essentially being so far out of the greater public consciousness that it doesn’t matter when she fails. And she inevitably will fail. Volume One, for all its pleasant moments isn’t exactly announcing itself as a definitive work of an assured new voice to take the medium by storm, though Deschanel’s prominent role in M. Night Shyamalan’s forthcoming The Happening promises to be a debacle enough to ensure that she’ll have the chance to produce a few more volumes of She & Him to try for something even better. And you know what? I’ll bet they’ll be pretty good, too. If only the poor movie star would be afforded the same chance.

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