Twenty albums you should hear (Part IV)

(For historical sake, Parts I, II, and III.)

Slow Club - Yeah So

This album is just fun. There's no other way to describe it. Which is kind of weird considering that once you get past the harmonies, high tempos, and bubbliness, the lyrics are really full of hopelessness and despair. They sound like normal indie falling in love songs, but they're not.

Unfortunately your expectations might be a little much because the first two songs - "When I Go" and "Giving Up On Love" - are probably the two best on the album, but the rest certainly holds its own.

"It Doesn't Have To Be Beautiful" is a frantic it-is-what-it-is tune, while "There Is No Good Way To Say I'm Leaving You" is just a little too slow for my liking.

"Come On Youth" is actually a pretty good song that I think I'd like more on its own, it doesn't really fit with the rest of the album. "Our Most Brilliant Friends" is ten minutes of craziness that serves as a nice closing.

I think if you were to play this for somebody else, with neither of your attention focused completely on the music, you'd think it was an awesome indie album you should really listen to again. Then once you listened to it on your own, you'd realize that the upbeat nature is betrayed by the depressing lyrics, and ignore it for a long long time thereafter.

Go on, give it a try. See if I'm right.

Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover

It's hard for me to label any album as my favourite, but if I had to pick it just might be this one. Dragonslayer has grown on me a ton since I first heard it, and Shut Up I Am Dreaming has the incomparable "The Men Are Called Horsemen There", but from top to bottom, Random Spirit Lover is simply amazing.

You've got the catchy, Spencer Krug vocal insanity, catchy guitar hook-laden songs like "The Mending Of The Gown" and "Up On Your Leopard, Upon The End Of Your Feral Days" which get people perking up and saying "hey, that's not bad!"

You've got the darker, instrumentally-heavy tracks like "Colt Stands Up, Grows Horns", "Stallion", and "Magic Vs. Midas" which harken back to Shut Up I Am Dreaming only with better vocals and a more epic feel.

You've got the harmonic vocals of "The Courtesan Has Sung" and "Child-Heart Losers" which will be stuck in your head even if they don't really make that much sense.

And you've got the hauntingly amazing back-to-back of "For The Pier (And Dead Shimmer)" and "The Taming Of The Hands That Came Back To Life", two songs which I haven't tired of despite dozens of plays over the last few months.

Add it all up, and it's just a great album. My only real complaint would be - and it's something Spencer Krug is guilty of in everything he does - that each song bleeds into the next, forcing you to either listen to the entire album or wonder 'what was with that last 30 seconds that sounded nothing like the rest of the song?'. But then again, it's not like listening to the entire album is a chore.

The Wave Pictures - If You Leave It Alone

What you intially think Slow Club are, these guys actually are. Maybe not quite as bouncy, but more genuine in their expressions of love and longing. Fun songs that you only need to hear once to remember for months. Neat instrumentation too.

"If You Leave It Alone" provides a bit of a misleading opening - once you're a few minutes into the song, it picks up, but it's a little slower than most of the album.

Something seems weird about the melody of "My Kiss", but it's nonetheless enjoyable. Also enjoyable are the following few songs - "Tiny Craters In The Sand" through "Bye Bye Bumble Belly" is probably my favourite run on the album, and those also happen to be my two favourite songs.

The last three songs are maybe a bit of a step down - at least once I've stopped listening at "Softly You, Softly Me" - but I think that's more a matter of taste, or just me not being able to take too much of this stuff at once.

Good album. Worth your time for sure. Assuming of course that you're into the same pretentious indie music that I am.

Why? - Eskimo Snow

Apparently Why? are classified as a hip hop band, which confuses me to no end as there's practically zero hip hop here. It's slow, brooding, Airborne Toxic Event-style (and they'd have made this list had I started it later, by the way) indie where it's more talking over instruments than singing but still good.

(Confused yet?)

There's not a lot to distinguish these songs from each other, really, although "This Blackest Purse" is my favourite and is the one where everything seems to go on just a little longer than you'd expect.

"Against Me" is another strong recommendation, although like everything on this album it's the instruments, and not the vocals, that clue you in to where the chorus is.

I'm generally not a hip-hop fan, but I'm feeling like Why?'s hip-hop might have a bit more energy to it than Eskimo Snow but not really be what I consider hip-hop, so it's probably worth checking out at some point.

"Berkeley By Hearseback" is another strong song and probably my second-favourite on the album - like Fake Surfers, this is an album which picks up steam as it goes along.

You Say Party! We Say Die! - XXXX

Yeah apparently I'm a few years late on this bandwagon. But then again, I didn't like YSP!WSD!'s early dance punk as much as the more recent and more towards pop stuff.

According to an interview I heard with the band on CBC Radio 3, it's still a little hard for these guys to admit they're singing about love, so 'XXXX' in several song titles (and the album title) is code for 'love'.

It does almost seem like this album was written on a dare - something like 'can you guys actually write songs about love if you wanted? can you even feel love?'. "There Is XXXX (Within My Heart)" answers this question in the opening track.

Some of the other songs - "Glory", "Make XXXX", and "Cosmic Wanship Avengers" come to mind right away - sound like the band enjoyed recording them, and are definitely more pop, more dance, less punk. Probably my favourites.

On the flip side are songs like "Laura Palmer's Prom" and "Heart Of Gold" which almost go too far in the other direction - there's no backbone to them, they're somewhat generic female pop. They're not bad for what they are, but it's kind of jarring considering who's behind them.

And that makes two female-fronted bands in this list of twenty, not counting Slow Club's dual vocalists and plenty of female backups. For me, that's an improvement.

--Ryan


will I gain weight in later life?

Enough about me, let's talk about you

(This was the most interesting GIS result I found for 'interactivity'. It's not the type of interactivity I meant, but it'll do.)

Why do I blog?

I've touched on this before, of course. I like to write, and I have an interest in writing about current events - thus, a blog would seem to be the best outlet for combining both activities. And it is.

But more to the point, I'm interested in hearing from people who either agree or disagree with me. That's why I have comments open (and unmoderated if on a post from within the past two weeks, moderated past that only so I can track new comments on old posts). That's why I link to this blog from pretty much any profile I have anywhere on the Internet (for the first year or so, it was even my MSN status message).

Not everybody follows this line of thinking though. Some people in my class have turned comments off completely, and others leave them on but try to avoid seeking them. Their reasoning is that they're not sure they would respond well to negative feedback - either they're not emotionally able to handle it or they're not going to be able to rebut.

I understand their feelings to a degree. Especially because they were forced to blog - they wouldn't have done it on their own, and they're not going to keep it up once the semester ends. However...it's a journalism class. They're all journalism students. Presumably this means they want to be journalists. And maybe I'm wrong in my thinking, but it's my understanding that working journalists will get feedback from people they've never met. Usually negative feedback - strangers are more likely to tell you you're doing something wrong than you're doing something right.

So if they can't handle negative feedback from complete strangers now, what makes them want to pursue a career where they're virtually guaranteed it in the future?

There's also the matter of people - and I'm not sure our class had any of these - who disable comments because they want you to know what they think, but they don't particularly care what you think. People who would rather have their opinions be thought of as fact than have any sort of debate. This is possibly the biggest turn-off I ever see in a blog - and I wonder if there's something to the fact that most of the time I see it, it comes from people with a political ideology somewhere to the right of mine.

I've generally been pretty lucky with the feedback I've received on this blog. Most of it comes from friends, fellow bloggers, and assorted other people I already know. These people read almost everything, comment on only what interests them, and are always respectful and (aside from one devout supporter of Ughur freedom) leave political biases aside.

Aside from that, there's a smaller group of commenters who are dedicated to a particular issue (the concept of micro-news comes into play here, I guess), and only visit my blog as often as I talk about that issue. For example, the person who commended me for pointing out that Maple Leaf and Maple Lodge are not the same company, even though they sound similar and even grocery store workers (like I was at the time) can get them confused.

Finally, we come to what everybody is afraid of: the malicious comments tearing apart everything you say. I can only recall one instance of this happening to me, and it's a recent one - the maliciousness blunted quite severely by the fact the attack came from the Esperanto lobby of all people.

It's very hard to take organized attacks on your blog seriously, because to me it means that provoking that attack means you're doing something right. If what you say causes an entire group to respond, especially if the responses all seem to be along the same lines, they're probably doing it because something you said is not in the best interests of their group.

*insert segue here*

I've always felt like the intelligence (and quality) of feedback was inversely proportional to the reputation and popularity of who was receiving it. I'm far from the first person to independently come to the conclusion that Youtube comments are the lowest form of Internet-based discourse, but there's definitely a ring of truth to it. Youtube is immensely popular - at this moment, Alexa ranks it as the fourth-most-visited site on the Internet - and so the people who comment on Youtube videos are those who don't have anywhere better to offer their opinions. I suspect that most of the 'stupid Youtube commenters' are nine-year-olds who really are doing exactly what you'd expect of a nine-year-old. Most of these people may have migrated from AOL.

Then you come to the obvious legitimate news sites - the Globe and Mail, TSN, CBC, et cetera. These are a step up from Youtube in the sense that people commenting on stories at these sites are at least a little bit engaged with the news, able to string together coherent sentences, and understanding that these are reputable websites. However, whatever they type into the comment box is exactly the same as what they would say to the newspaper or the television set had they seen the story on those media - still not exactly well-thought-out, and certainly not about to engage in anybody in serious debate.

Finally, blogs. Nobody just happens to stumble upon a blog. Nobody kills time by going to an unknown blog the way they do going to CBC.ca. If you're reading a blog, it's because you're already interested in what is being said, and who is saying it. If you're commenting on a blog - and I'm talking about a real standalone blog here, not a 'blog' written by a Toronto Star reporter for the Toronto Star's website - it's because you're interested in the topic, want to make your own thoughts known, and are interested in having a debate.

In that sense, blogs are the best form of journalism when it comes to fostering public debate, ergo blogs are the most democratic form of journalism.

--Ryan

Twenty albums you should hear (Part III)

Islands - Return to the Sea

It took me a few listens to start liking this - probably because people had been recommending Islands to me since high school and there was no way it could live up to my expectations - but it's definitely good low-key dreampop.

One major complaint though - the first song, "Swans (Life After Death)" doesn't do anything for me. And it's nine minutes long. Bad start to the album, and perhaps that's what left a sour taste in my mouth for so long. It's not that I have a problem with long songs - "Bay of Pigs" and "Rubies" are two of my favourite Destroyer tunes, and they clock in at a combined 22 minutes - it's just that this one is low-key to the extreme and never really gets me into it.

Things pick up right away, though, as "Humans" kicks of a run of four awesome songs and seven good ones. "Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby" is probably the catchiest of the bunch and a great starting point, while "Tsuxiit" is a fun little instrumental ditty. Fun summer music mostly.

It drags a bit at the end again - "If" and "Ones" are a bit too dreamy for my taste, and "Renaud" combines that with the cardinal bonus track sin of only starting after several minutes of silence.

Overall though, fun little album.

Metric - Fantasies

Obviously a great album. It won the CASBY award for Best Album of 2009, and who am I to disagree with an award I'd never heard of until a few months ago?

The problem is that the four songs released as singles thus far can all be found in the first six tracks - so if you go into this already knowing the singles, as I did, the back will really seem to drag and not be as good.

That's not to say that the back half is bad - it's a little less polished, as if the bulk of the production work was spent on the first half, but it's still strong female-fronted pop that at times borders rock. And actually, "Stadium Love" is quite good.

But let me just say a few words about the songs in the first half: They. Are. Freaking. Awesome. "Gimme Sympathy" is a little more low-key and would probably sound great acoustic, "Gold Guns Girls" and "Sick Muse" are just plain great, and "Help I'm Alive" is probably the weakest of the singles but still solid.

And, hey, a girl singer. Apparently I don't discriminate like that anymore.

The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema

Considering how much I absolutely love everything these guys have ever done, it's surprising how easy it was for me to pick this album over the rest. Mass Romantic goes a little overboard with the zaniness, Challengers is a little too low-key and mellow, and Electric Version is close but ultimately not quite as just plain fun as this one.

We start off with the titular track, which is catchy, singalong-able (by design), and very high-tempo. Great song to kick off a concert, and of course good way to start the album. The follow-up is "The Bones of an Idol", which is a decent enough song that really sounds like it belongs on Challengers more than here.

Then we get into a frankly awesome run. "Use It" and "The Bleeding Heart Show" are two awesome songs which should catch on with anybody who ever hears them. The harmonies, the hooks, the repetitive catchy choruses - it's all there. "Jackie, Dressed In Cobras" is the first Dan Bejar contribution, and it works well because it's considerably less insane than what you usually throws on one these albums. Or maybe it just seems this way because Carl and Neko provide more vocals than usual for a Dan song.

"The Jessica Numbers" is a strong power-pop callback to the previous albums, and "These Are The Fables" is something completely unique in the NPs' catalogue - a Neko-sung ballad. The structure is really, really simple, but it's still a lovely song. The back end of the album is a little more disjointed - not bad songs, but they don't flow as nicely as the front half does. The album ends on "Stacked Crooked", which probably wins my vote for most underrated NPs song of all time.

Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping

I...don't really know what to say about this one. It's indie, but it's not the sort of indie most of the rest of this list is. It's quirky, unorthodox, and highly sexual. I think you have to listen to it to fully understand what I'm talking about.

There are a few songs I particularly enjoy, so I'll comment on those and ignore the rest. Nothing terribly bad though.

"Nonpareil of Favor" is the first track, and it's a false start of sorts - it makes you think this might just be another album full of typical indie love songs, albeit a good one. And maybe a little more instrumental than most. This idea is shattered in the first line of the next song, "Wicked Wisdom" - and the second, and the third, and pretty much every recognizable line in that song.

"For Our Elegant Caste" has a chorus where the obviousness of the hinting at bisexuality is matched only by its ridiculous level of catchiness, "An Eluardian Instance" is back to heterosexuality, and "Gallery Piece" is obtuse in whether it's meant as a love song or a love/hate song.

"Women's Studies Victims" is oddly catchy for being more-or-less spoken word. Same goes for "And I've Seen A Bloody Shadow". "Death Is Not A Parallel Move" sticks out as being a little more electro than most of the album, "Beware Our Nubile Miscreants" is a little more overt than most of the album, and "Id Enganger" is a little more fun than the rest of the album.

A couple other notes - the funk influence is kind of neat, and some songs do have that thing going on where they were probably originally two or three separate songs. Still a fun, if somewhat different, album.

R.E.M. - Out Of Time

It's no Abbey Road, but it's the other old album on this list. (I thought the Tragically Hip's Up To Here made the cut, but apparently not.)

I have a bit of a bias towards this album because it was a standard for me to drum along to when I was starting out with that. Doesn't change that it narrowly beats Automatic For The People as my favourite R.E.M. album.

"Radio Song" is an unusual song, at least by R.E.M. standards - a slower opening half followed by a rap collaboration with KRS-One of all people. "Losing My Religion" is up next, and it's a pretty well-known song, so I won't say much about it other than that it was probably the first song I ever liked the lyrics of. "Low" is, well, low - moody, short on instruments, but still enjoyable.

"Near Wild Heaven" is a fun song where ten-year-old me thought it sounded like the band was having a party, plus I like hearing Mike Mills on lead vocals. "Endgame" is again something different - certainly not a pop song, a bit of Stipe scat singing, also a lead trumpet solo. (I'm a firm believer that any song can be improved with a trumpet solo, this will be the subject of a future post.)

I'm not as familiar with the rest of the album, because my parents had it on tape and I usually just listened to the A-side most of the time. "Shiny Happy People" is what it is, obviously. "Belong" has spoken word vocals and nice Mills/Buck harmonies, probably the most underrated song on the album in my opinion. "Texarkana" is another catchy Mills-sung tune, and I don't have much to say about the rest.

And this is probably the only review ever of Out Of Time not to include the word 'mandolin'.

...dammit.

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A couple quick programming notes.

The final batch of five albums will make these seem like the ultimate of the mainstream.

Tomorrow is Grey Cup day. I definitely will not be doing a liveblog the way I have previous years - essay season is unfortunately in full swing, and I've already set aside a couple of hours for Chelsea/Arsenal (I've turned into a soccer fan, apparently).

If I watch the game, there's a better-than-decent chance I'll give livetweeting a try, so follow me on Twitter or something.

For the record, I think it's the Als' year.

Also, Andrew Coyne is anti-feminist. As usual with Coyne, I don't disagree.

--Ryan

Some links and a video

Taking a break from music and from abstract politics to share with you some of the most awesome pit stops on the information superhighway.

First up, Lifehacker. It's been around for a few years, it's been popular for a few years, but maybe you're like me and have somehow managed to completely ignore it until recently.

Every update on Lifehacker is designed to improve your life or help you with a common problem - with solutions that are either free or extremely thrifty. Although not as tech-y as sister site Gizmodo, technology still features prominently in Lifehacker updates - new applications, new ways to use existing technologies, et cetera.

However, Lifehacker also has plenty of tips that are more suited to a DIY lifestyle and involve no tech support whatsoever - the front page currently tells you how to make any pair of gloves work with a touchscreen device, how to use sand to prop up awkward objects you might be repairing, how to properly gorge to maximize your enjoyment of a feast and minimize the after-effects, and how to wipe water marks off of wooden furniture with toothpaste. A nifty little site that's updated many times daily.

If Lifehacker's plethora of time-saving ideas has left you with untold hours spare and no idea what to occupy your time with, maybe you should give Sporcle a try.

Sporcle is a site full of trivia quizzes. And that's all there is to it. You can try and name common foods in Spanish, countries of the world, MLB all-time stolen base leaders, song titles from opening lyrics, or just about anything else you can think of.

There are hundreds of games - all timed, and all with the ability to compare your results to everyone else - with six new games added every day (three on weekends).

Word of advice: stick to the games on the main site. Do not go into the 'User Created' section - not a quality issue or anything, but it'll get far, far too addictive at that point.

And if you're still bored - or even if you're not - take five minutes to watch this video. It's completely awesome.



--Ryan

Google me this

Despite this being another JN229 post, it has nothing to do with politics. Instead, I complain about our understanding of technology.

For an assignment in another class, I had to cover a Brantford city council meeting. One of the items discussed was a proposed extension of Old Park Road on the outskirts of the city's west end.

To get a better understanding of just what would have to be uprooted for this road to come into place, I used Google Maps to take a look at the area. Particularly, I was interested in what a local imam said about the road possibly going over a cemetery. Here's what Google Maps had to say:


Pretty simple, right? Oak Park Road carries on a little past the end of civilization as we know it at Hardy Street, and then you get a dead end.

Except that's not what happens. Switch to satellite view, and you get this:


There's other roads there. Some of them may be dirt (further zooming is mostly inconclusive although a couple are definitely paved). There's even a bridge over the Grand River.

Then I had the thought: I've seen this before. Google doesn't seem to add new roads to their maps - so since the satellite photos were added after Google Maps debuted, the satellite maps will show roads that the regular maps don't. Likewise, Street View will (where applicable) show even newer additions to the infrastructure.

One question jumps to mind right away. If 9/11 were to happen today, how long would it taken before the World Trade Center wasn't part of Google Maps? Google Satellite Maps? Google Street View? It's not like they update these things often.

I'm not suggesting that this is a glaring error on Google's part - at least not yet. After all, would you be able to stay on top of every new road and building that goes up around the world?

Down the road it could be more of a problem if my hunch is correct and the original Google Maps is never updated - at least a problem for Google, as they'd likely lose market share to more up-to-date maps. In this sense, the in-car GPS manufacturers' tendency to release an updated data pack every year or two is less money-grabbing than it is providing a useful service.

But there are two things that jump out at me. For one, it suggests that Google has a tendency to work on one of their services, get it as close to perfection as possible, and then abandon it when they have something new to play with (i.e. satellite photos). Considering Google's public reputation for being objective and infallible, this is a major blemish on their record. (Heck, the alleged objectivity of Google could be a nice blog post on its own if I were feeling a little more motivated tonight.)

Also, it leads me to think of Google Maps as less "this is the world, this is how the world is" and more "this is how the world was a few years ago" - but in a good way. Google can essentially act as historical cartographers for the entire planet, keeping archived maps of the entire world that would be tremendously useful for future researchers to see the evolution of cities.

Whether Google can be trusted with all that power is an entirely different debate - but it's not like we aren't already trusting them with far more.

--Ryan

Twenty albums you should hear (Part II)

Here's the second batch of five.

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Remember how last time I mentioned that The Duckworth Lewis Method wouldn't sound out of place on an oldies radio station? Now that I've given it some thought, neither would these guys. Catchy vocal hooks with enough over-production to remind you of a lo-fi ELO or something, instruments kept to the background, and an overall pleasing sound.

An article in Maclean's a couple of weeks back had an offhand mention to Fleet Foxes being thrown on at a party where the previous music had been all Beatles and their ilk, and the Foxes being 'well-received'. I'm not surprised.

The only complaint I can level is that...well, it sounds too much like what's thought of as "old people music". Listening to the album again now, I'm still getting the "hey, this is good!" feeling I've had every other time, but I'm also realizing that it's background music, it's for people who say they like jazz when what they really mean is that they don't like metal, it's not something that will ever command 100% of your attention.

But it's still good. It's fun, it's folksy, and it's certainly a lot more accessible than most of this list. If you're after specific song recommendations - since this is one album where it's okay - let's go with "White Winter Hymnal", "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song", and "Your Protector".

The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound

I know, I've talked about this one before. But it deserves it. Deserves more, really.

This is what modern rock should be. While Nickelback might appeal to the lowest common denominator, Gaslight appeals to every denominator. While Metric might be making people think pop-rock is the only good rock anymore, Gaslight are proving them wrong. And so forth.

If you like Tom Petty or Bob Seger, you'll love this. Although I'm not a huge fan of the last three songs, they're still far better than the back-end filler on most albums.

The '59 Sound starts off with the somewhat jangly "Great Expectations" and the titular track, then gets into a few more straightforward rock songs, ending at "Film Noir", probably the closest thing this album gets to a hard rock or true punk song.

"Miles Davis & The Cool" took a while to grow on me, but is now one of my favourite songs on the album - and it only gets better with the next three, which are catchy, somewhat diverse, and just all-around awesome rock.

This CD should be blaring out of every car in the summertime. Awesome, awesome rock.

(Sink or Swim, Gaslight's first offering, isn't as good frankly. You can see where the foundations were laid for this one, but '59 is miles ahead.)

The Guess Who - Running Back Thru Canada

Heh. Yeah.

A bit of a throwback to my pre-indie tastes, this is the double-album that got me through dozens of night shifts stocking grocery store shelves.

There's something undefinably cool about hearing the music your parents grew up to, only thirty years later and with the musicians thirty years older.

Backstory: In 1999, The Guess Who reunited for the first time since 1983, to play a cross-Canada tour. The entire tour was recorded, and songs from many different venues - Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Barrie come to mind right away - were combined to make this double album, which gives the feeling of being at one of the tour dates.

The songs will be instantly recognizable to anybody who grew up with The Guess Who - or anybody who, like me, grew up with classic rock. With Randy Bachman being part of the group, a few BTO songs are thrown in for good measure.

The capper is a 14-minute rendition of "American Woman", with lead singer Burton Cummings still sounding awesome.

This is one where you need to listen to the whole thing - it'll take a while, but if you remember the tunes, it'll be worth it. If not...well, it's some nice Canadiana for you.

Human Highway - Moody Motorcycle

A certain commenter will scold me for not knowing the backstory behind this group, but it's one guy from Islands and...somebody else. They play catchy lo-fi poppish stuff.

"The Sound" and "All Day" are both great tracks which gets the album off to a fine start. It's hard to say if the album never quite gets back to that level of excellence or if all the songs sound somewhat similar, so eventually they all blend together, but those two remain my favourites.

This is great naptime music. Drifting in and out of sleep, you won't know when one song ends and another begins, which is just fine by me.

"Moody Motorcycle" is the next song to stand out to me - although after another listen through, I think I mistakenly believed that half the songs were Islands tunes. "Moody Motorcycle" is a little less dreamy, a little quicker, and thus memorable.

I'm worried that I'm being too negative on this album - it's very good folksy stuff, it's just that there's not too much I can really say about it.

"Duties Of A Lighthouse Keeper" is another good song, and "I Wish I Knew" provides a bit different of an ending.

Good album. On the accessibility scale, it's pretty high up there, but not like Fleet Foxes or something.

Intelligence - Fake Surfers

This is a little lower on the accessibility scale. Not quite Animal Collective, but it's not too far off really.

The name of the game here is some relatively catchy vocals followed by a crapload of synthesizers and a guitar. "Moody Tower", the second song in, is the perfect example of this.

The album goes by in a breeze - twelve tracks, but barely over half an hour of music. Every song is pretty short - which is good, as if they were longer they would be obviously stretched out.

"Debt & ESP", the third track, is probably my favourite track on the album, if only because it's the catchiest. "I Hear Depression" is the exact opposite - vocals are not memorable, but the instrumental hook will be stuck in your head for hours.

I'm guessing this is the sort of album that gets easier and easier to enjoy when the amount of substances you're using gets greater and greater.

This album definitely doesn't drag in the latter half - the best way I can describe "Universal Babysitter" is that it's a Wolf Parade song if Spencer Krug no-showed and they didn't bother replacing him, I take back what I said earlier because "Thank You God For Fixing The Tape" is definitely both my favourite and the catchiest, "Pony People" sounds so normal that I'm sure I thought it was a Fleet Foxes tune, and "The Unessential Cosmic Perspectiv" is less crazy than you'd expect the crazy album-ending song to be.

In fact, I'd argue that while the trend is for most albums to be front-loaded and have random subpar material at the back, Fake Surfers is the opposite - it gets better as it goes on.

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I still haven't done the full pruning and replenishing of the blogroll at the left that I'd like to do, but I would like to draw your attention to one new addition.

Must Win Situation is a sports blog featuring The Sputnik's sports editor (and noted friend of the homeless) Kyle Brown. Also two other people who I don't know. And a podcast with two of my roommates for some reason.

But it's definitely good sports commentary, and it stands out by not just being the hockey/NFL/Jays combo you'd expect - NCAA, CIS, and even fishing have all been tackled on MWS.

I don't blog about sports nearly as much as I used to - so if you're missing that, check out MWS.

--Ryan

On celebrity

Sarah Palin is back in the news thanks to the impending release of her book and a recent appearance on Oprah Winfrey's show.

The main effect of all this seems to have been for journalists to write about the renewed possibility of Palin running for - and maybe winning - the American presidency in 2012. (My favourite line, and I've seen it in too many places to attribute it to just one person, is that this is what the Mayans were expecting.)

President Palin, the conventional logic goes, would be a disaster. A combination of celebrity and neo-con, she would be able to enacted a Bush-like agenda with far more support because of her Clinton-like folksy charm.

In reality, I'm not so convinced that a Sarah Palin presidency would spell the end of Western civilization, or even the more realistic option of an increasingly laughable America.

American presidents do not really have all that much power - look at how far Obama has had to stray to the right to accomplish even a tiny fraction of what he'd like to. Why would Sarah Palin be any different? Wouldn't Congress still be able to impose its will on her orders?

More importantly, Sarah Palin is not a hard ideologue like Bush Sr. or Obama or even Jimmy Carter - she is perhaps the most malleable politician we've ever seen. If anybody can convince her that something is a good idea - and it seems pretty easy to do just that, Palin must be either incapable of or unwilling to engage in any sort of critical thought - she will back that idea until her dying breath.

I don't think she realizes how stupid some of the things she says will seem. I think she honestly believes that she is doing what's best for America. In that sense, at least, she has the right motivation.

The problems arise if she chooses to surround herself with people who might be less scrupulous, less willing to suggest policies which are good for the country, and more willing to suggest policies that are good for the people suggesting them - which, given that this is the GOP we're talking about, seems like a foregone conclusion.

It's okay to want to be president for the ego boost - didn't Obama spend the first month of his reign inviting different musicians and celebrities to the White House? What's worrying is when you're so caught up in the celebrity of the presidency that the business of governing the country comes second (or third, or fourth, or...). Especially if the people you delegate it to aren't the right people for such a task. That's why I'm terrified of Sarah Palin.

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Speaking of celebrity (how's that for a forced segue?), it was one of the thousand or so topics that came up in class today. Basically, the argument was that the primary purpose of blogs is not to provide journalism - bloggers don't actually care about reporting the news on their blogs, they're just hoping to get noticed and become (on some level) celebrities.

At first, I disagreed with this idea. Specifically, I thought of this blog - I've never considered it a celebrity-making endeavour. It's a place for me to hone my writing and analytical skills. If people happen to enjoy reading my random brain droppings, great - that's why it's open to the public. But it's not like I go out of my way to court an audience.

Well, that last bit isn't exactly true. Or true at all, really. Case in point: tomorrow's issue of The Sputnik has a little plug for this blog.

I could take the easy way out and claim that it doesn't really count as seeking publicity when it wasn't my idea. But when it was suggested to me, I still said yes. And beyond that, I've put stuff up on Twitter in the past if I've been particularly proud of it.

There is literally nothing that would attract people to this place over any of the million other blogs out there, aside from a personal connection with me. Bad nursery rhymes, links to websites people already know about, and mildly amusing personal anecdotes aren't exactly high-quality material.

And yet, I publish our URL in the school paper, in the hopes that it'll attract another reader to my bizarre and often incomprehensible writings. (Which would give us a grand total of, what, maybe three?)

So I guess somewhere, deep down, I do want to be a celebrity, no matter how much I may deny it on the surface.

Just don't put me anywhere near TMZ.

--Ryan

(P.S. To our new third reader, I'm not always this introspective. Nor this cynical. Honest.)

They're creepy and they're kooky; the Royal Family

Last night, I turned into The National - like most who've made their opinions known, I'm not a fan of the new format - to see what the At Issue gang would be talking about. I did so more begrudgingly than usual - I was expecting more talk about how Ignatieff isn't connecting with the public, or how the government is either bungling or doing a perfect job of doling out H1N1 vaccinations, or maybe, if they were feeling particularly topical, talk about the new immigration booklet.

Instead? They talked about the Queen. And the royal family. And the governor-general. If any of them matter to Canadians. If any of them should matter questions.

And save for Andrew Coyne inexplicably referring to Prince Charles as 'Paul', it was a pretty good discussion. You can replay it here.

My thoughts? While we obviously need to have something to act as a check on the Prime Minister, I'm not sure that the Crown, in its current practice, is the best way of going about that.

Consider the current disconnect between the Canadian people and the royal family themselves - they're an ocean away, and every few years one of them comes over here for a visit. Of course it's going to be hard for Canadians to accept that these people have actual power over us - they're never here, how could they possibly know what's best for Canada!

Coyne proposed an off-the-wall suggestion to this problem - bring over Prince Harry (or whomever), call him King Harry, and have him start up a new branch of the dynasty, one with strong Canadian roots. Although I don't think he ever explicitly states it, I assume Coyne means that the Governor-General position would thus be abolished.

I can't be in favour of that. Britain is currently mulling over the monarchy in their own way - the biggest argument being that one family, accustomed to privilege, should maybe not be the ultimate rulers of the United Kingdom. Regardless of whether that argument is right or wrong, why transplant it over here when we have the opportunity to do something better? And do we really want to bring in our own version of the tabloid culture that surrounds the family in Britain?

My suggestion is a simple one: change the process of who picks the governor-general. Right now, it seems like the trendy thing to do is to pick a GG who falls into an ethnic minority because if we ever get accused of only letting old white guys into our political elite we can just go 'nuh-uh!' and point at the GG.

The problem with this is that the people who become governor-general are not people who have any particular qualification to be our country's ultimate ruler - either political or popular. So when something like last winter's parliamentary crisis comes along, people are left with doubts that the GG either understands their duty or will ultimately make the right decision.

Solution: get better governors-general. Jean Beliveau. Rick Hansen. Romeo Dallaire. People who have the respect of the public and embody the Canadian spirit. People with no known political affiliations. People who have such a mythical aura about them that Canadians would unflinchingly accept that, in a time of crisis, these people will know what to do.

The appointment process is also a bit of a tricky issue - as long as the Prime Minister is the de facto selector, there will always be an element of politicization in the GG position. My first thought was that maybe the Supreme Court should become the torch-bearers for this, in a sudden burst of relevance. But this time, I have to defer to Coyne - have the highest-level members of the Order of Canada select the GG, who because of the criteria I outlined above will likely be among their ranks already, in a similar fashion to how the College of Cardinals selects new popes.

Nothing else would change. The GG would still be required, by convention, to follow the PM's advice in all but the most dubious of times, and the British Crown, again by convention, would follow the GG's advice essentially always.

Is it likely to happen? Probably not. The amount of work it takes to change even one word in the constitution is likely to scare off any politicians from trying these changes, and our propensity for minority governments means that we're unlikely to see any PM with a mandate to make this sort of change for a long time anyhow.

But it's a nice thought.

--Ryan