Video Collective

So- February is almost over.  Thank freaking goodness.  This means its almost springtime.  Nothing like some natural vitamin D to start feeling better about everything!  I have this weird connection between what music I listen to during certain times of the year.  The summer of 2009, I got hold of Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion, which just sounds that much better when its sunny outside.  Songs on here even promote playing in the mud with your kids, playing basketball, and walking around in summertime clothes.  Great, freaking melodic music.
Animal Collective have taken some questionably legal drugs in their time and are both really colorful and really weird.  I recently watched the new official video for their song "Applesauce," and it did not disappoint.  The song is definitely one of the better ones from 2012's Centipede Hz and the video consists of changing colors behind a silhouette of a head furiously, violently eating a mango for 5 and half minutes.  Their songs are weird.  So are their videos.  I thought I'd make a collective of Animal Collective's video to see how "Applesauce" compares with other AC videos, and to celebrate the near end of February.  (WARNING: This is all quite disturbing, beyond all reason.)

Here's the video for Merriweather Post Pavillion's "Brothersport."  Pitchfork compared the art-work to dropping acid to crappy 70s cartoons. 

 

 This one's a classic.  "Peacebone" from 2007's Strawberry Jam.  The screaming in the middle may be unbearable, but the video itself is... well, equally unbearable.  Imagine Alien and It coming together.

From 2004's Sung Tongs, we have "Who Could Win a Rabbit."  It's the tortoise and the hair, only with the ending you don't tell your kids about. 

Panda Bear is one of the 4 (or sometimes 2 or 3) members of Animal Collective.  This video is possibly the worst thing to watch in the history of the world.  You forget you're listening to an actual song at first, but listening to 3:15-5:15 is actually quite catchy, soft and happy.

And there you have it, folks.  The most colorful, bizarre, disturbing... and yet harmonic, band of our time.  I'd like to thank the internet for introducing these guys to me in the spring of 2009.

The Importance of Valentine's Day

...Actually, no, I can't think of anything to write.
But I hope you all have a nice day anyway!

The Grammys vs Actual Universal Acclaim

"The grammies aren’t a measure of much that is calculable or quantifiable by our own contexts for music. Why you create is most important... This is why i hate the grammies. Because it allows you to question what you've done. Don't question what you’ve done."
- 2X Grammy winner Justin Vernon, of Bon Iver (via twitter)
And this year's nominees for album of the year are:
Fun.  Some Nights
Mumford & Sons  Babel
The Black Keys  El Camino
Jack White  Blunderbuss
Frank Ocean  Channel Orange
And this year's list of albums that are actually accumulated by 131 different top 10 lists made by professional music critics are:
#5- Japandroids  Celebration Rock
#4- Fiona Apple  The Idler Wheel...
#3- Tame Impala  Lonerism
#2- Kendrick Lamar  good kid, m.A.A.d city
#1- Frank Ocean  Channel Orange
Anybody else see something wrong here?  According to metacritic, Frank Ocean's Channel Orange is the near obvious album of the year.  83 different publications ranked it in their top 10 albums of the 2012, with 19 of them ranking it at #2 and 28 of them ranking it #1.  No other 2012 album got any more than 8 different #1 spots.  Channel Orange sounds like a pretty darn good competitor for album of the year.
There's also some sweet stats for Blunderbuss.  I only showed the top 5 list for metacritic's best albums of 2012, however Blunderbuss was ranked at a very reasonable #9.  It was in 22 different top 10 lists, including 2 different #1 spots.  Critics can agree on this one.
El Camino is kind of a stretch.  I gotta say, come on, who doesn't love the Black Keys?  But is it just me, or was 2010's Brothers totally better?  On top of that, El Camino wasn't even released in 2012, but I guess it was just released barely a year ago.  Part of me feels like the Grammys picked Camino as a "best album" contender because they feel bad for not giving Brothers enough credit (metacritic's 8th best album of 2010).  El Camino made the metacritic list for 2011 at #28.  Definitely not a bad album, but when it comes to universal acclaim, there were probably better options out there.
Some Nights and Babel are critically out of the question.  The average critic gave Babel a score of 63% and the average critic gave Some Nights a 60%.  Do the Grammys truly believe these are 2 of the 5 best albums of the year? 
The Grammys are not absolutely terrible at picking actually good albums as their "best" albums.  In both 2010 and 2011, the album of the year was given to metacritic's #2 album of each year (Adele, Arcade Fire).  But the nominations are still pretty stupid.  Frank Ocean is nominated for 6 different Grammys this year, Fiona Apple gets a nod for "best alternative music album," but Japandroids, Tame Impala & even the gold-selling Kendrick Lamar are left in the cold.  Oh yeah, and both Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger" and Fun.'s "We Are Young" get nominated for both "song of the year" and "record of the year."  I rest my case.