It has been a minute since Anthony and Max dropped their last their last entry. We were worried the rapture would end life on earth as we know it, so we figured what was the point of putting in all that work if no one’s left to read it? Disappointingly, we’re all still here, but more importantly there is, as always, tons of great music out there to make this earthly life bearable.  Read on, dear followers…

Thurston Moore has just released a solo LP, Demolished Thoughts, on Matador. He’s released song-oriented “pop” solo albums in the past, a few years back the modest but charming Trees Outside The Academy, and in the mid-90s Psychic Hearts, which has attained a bit of a cult following in the intervening years. Demolished Thoughts is the mellowest and most plainly beautiful of these records. Deceptively simple arrangements on Thurston’s acoustic are complemented by violin from Samara Lubelski (Tower Recordings, Metal Mountains) and harp from Mary Lattimore (Kurt Vile, Fursaxa).

The record was produced by Beck in Los Angeles and a few critics have drawn comparisons to Mr. Hansen’s melancholy masterwork Sea Change. Demolished Thoughts isn’t as cohesive as that record, but it’s not trying to be. Demolished Thoughts does have a downer California vibe at times, but it’s a lush, relaxing record that I find myself wanting to listen to more than I would have expected, given how conventional (in a good way) it is.

I had the opportunity to see Thurston play a record release show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg with the full band he has recruited for a brief tour. The group includes the aforementioned Lubelski and Lattimore, and is filled out by Keith Wood (his one-man psych folk project is Hush Arbors, highly recommended) and John Moloney, who has spent time in long-running northeast weirdos Sunburned Hand of the Man. The result is an extremely tasteful and restrained group, capable of expanding on the records’ limited vocabulary. Wood’s guitar work, in particular, is an essential component of the sound.

Moore is a songwriter of such unique gifts it’s a pleasure to hear his tunes in a context other than Sonic Youth, a group who has always been careful to give each member an equal say in the resulting sound. His new solo group is recruited from the associates Moore has connected with in the orbit of the tight knit and highly productive Western Massachusetts underground music scene he and wife Kim Gordon have participated in since relocating from New York to Northampton. Demolished Thoughts is not going to change rock music as we know it (what is at this point?) but its pleasures are not soon forgotten. (MB)

Anthony went to Coachella last month and had a grand old time. I know you also wanted to talk specifically about the stage, sound and lighting setup which has been greatly beefed up from previous years.

I wanted to ask you specifically about the Animal Collective set. Now, they were playing a lot of new material which is always a risky move no matter how high profile your group is. Particularly in the festival setting where it is standard to do a crowd pleasing “hits” set. Do you think that Animal Collective have achieved a level of credibility where that is not totally necessary? That is, do people pretty much know what to expect from an Animal Collective show and know that they are not going to be getting the hits. This is an extremely difficult thing to do, audiences will always reward groups for giving them what they want at the most basic level. Personally, I am a massive fan and I think it’s great that they do these riskier sets, even for high profile shows, but obviously I am not your average Coachella-goer in a sea of tens of thousands of people who maybe just want to hear “My Girls.” (MB)

Yep, Max, you are totally on point. The visuals and lights were completely beefed up. They spent a lot of money on them and they let this organization called the Creator’s Project have their way with the experiential art direction. These people have done a lot of amazing lit up things with video and such. They’re really a bunch of producers if you go to their site. Anyway, there was a different effect for each headliner and all of it came off exceedingly well.

Except when Animal Collective let Black Dice run the visuals for their entire set. That was totally hellish and people ran for the hills, frankly. The Creators’ Project people built this super intense audio-visual cube that surrounded the Coachella main stage. It moved like a Rubik’s Cube, it had it’s own mini-sets between sets. It was a super-powered being unto itself to be dealt with. When a band like Arcade Fire or Duran Duran was playing, all those screens were as intoxicating as the deep jade grass of the polo fields.

But when Animal Collective took the stage, Black Dice really dropped the ball. Personally I was excited to see AC, but was instantly confused as to why they’d let Black Dice have their way with the visuals. So far from the Bushwick borderline, it made no sense to me that they’d allow a truly sub-par outfit free reign to define their set on a canvas so beyond the pale of anything Black Dice would ever and will ever be capable of painting.

The easiest metaphor I can think of for what resulted is letting a toddler drive a Porsche when it’s your Porsche, and you’re still paying off your second born’s braces as you watch that baby you love grind your car and your hedge row into a pile of unrecognizable synthetic and organic material. The visuals amounted to a primary-color video test screen with a swirling skull in the middle of it – for hours. It was so bright and boring that it made the natural backdrop of Coachella seem fake. Black Dice, whom I’ve never really liked, can now, officially, eat a grenade tomorrow for breakfast forever in my eyes. It takes a lot to ruin Coachella’s main stage, and I feel like they’re probably proud they did, but they shouldn’t be. It’s easy to take a dump in public: anyone can do it but most understand this would be a bad idea.

Worst of it all was the fact that AC were completely kicking ass. They were on a very interesting trip, way out there in the desert, going for it on the new material that will make up their new album. What they were doing was daring and dark and really fucking cool – but sorry, Black Dice were too busy diddling their VCR dicks to even show us what AC were actually up to.

Duran Duran were great. Way greater than anyone but me expected them to be. And the Black Keys kicked so much ass it’s silly. They really are one of the most succinctly powerful things touring right now. I dare anyone not to dance, stomp, fuck or drink when they’re on stage. They’re fantastic.

I should probably preface this entire entry by saying that in the 9 of 11 years I’ve attended Coachella, this past year personally was the absolute worst I’d ever wish on my worst enemy. Still, I feel that if music moves you, you should be able to rise above, or at least rise into what is happening outside of you, if in fact that is actually good enough – which hopefully, if you’re there in the first place, it should be. That said, this Coachella for me sucked. It was hateful and reeked of 1000 year old eggs. But, like a Karmic janitor, all has been righted, cleaned and made well in my world, kiddies. Not to worry. So, Max, honestly, I was paying more attention to the light show than a lot of the acts, because like the worst third-tier character in Melrose Place, I was down in it, man. (AB)

Apart from the obvious decline in general music sales, there was for a long time the counter narrative that live music was doing well. This seems to be turning a bit, with huge arena tours starting to flounder in certain cases. However, festivals seem to have reached their height and continue to grow. Coachella sold out despite that fact that it was missing an obvious “must go” headliner and Bonnaroo is sold out. New festivals are cropping out – I am attending three next month. Personally, I think festivals are a terrible way to see music. Not in every case, but generally. Even with the most sophisticated setup, outdoor sound will never have the acoustics of a nice club room and the crowds can be utterly intolerable. Not just the sheer size, but the touristic attitude that festivals encourage.

Of course, a music writer is not a great litmus test, and since we both live in New York a festival like Coachella is more of a novelty, providing an interesting entry point to survey the music scene “in general” rather than a place to check out new bands in earnest. A lot of people in Los Angeles head out to the desert for Coachella but I’m wondering if most of these fests bank on people traveling from long distances or even from outside the country. My roommates are driving to Tennessee for Bonnaroo, which I find absurd for people who live in New York, but they’re just as excited about the hippy camping aspect as the lineup. I prefer my creature comforts, thank you very much, but I’m wondering if festival’s main draw is still the promise of a unique, collective experience that is not repeatable or translatable outside of the context of a hundred thousand people creating an impromptu community for a few days. (MB)

Speaking of Animal Collective, Panda Bear put out his long anticipated solo record Tomboy a couple of months ago. Many of the songs had been released over the past year as singles and so there was a lot of material floating around out there, however the final mix of the album is quite different. The album sounded great and now that I’ve had some time to spend with it I’m more enamored. I have no idea what genre of music to describe this record as. I’m ultimately drawn to describe it as a type of experimental dance music. Apparently most of the sounds were created with processed guitar, but the end result for me ultimately owes itself to something like Arthur Russell. A deeply personal music that plays within the general “dance” or electronic music genres.

I also got to see Panda Bear perform the entire album live with Sonic Boom (Peter Kember of Spaceman 3 and Spectrum), who produced and did the final mix of the tracks. The show was a continuous wall of sound over an hour long with over-the-top visuals and strobe lights aimed at the audience. The volume was through the roof and the result was a rave-like atmosphere that was earnestly psychedelic without being “druggy” or hippie-like. I would jump at the chance to see Panda Bear in this current configuration. (MB)

Hey it’s a new Beastie Boys album, who’d have thought? And guess what it’s great, very alive, very funny and silly. I had pretty much written the guys off because they’re old and To The 5 Boroughs was bland, which is probably the worst thing you can say about them given their track record. They’ve also marked the release with what will go down as one of the most ambitious music videos ever. The idea of simply overloading a video with celebrity cameos doesn’t seem great on the surface but the “Fight For Your Right to Party Revisited” short film (it’s nearly thirty minutes long) feels like the last word on the current era of viral videos and internet absurdity. They ramp up the famous face counting so hard and so fast it becomes a meta-joke on the entire phenomenon. I think its brilliant, as it pokes fun of itself while also becoming the perfect “Have you seen this?” entree to a pal or someone you meet a party. A bunch of friends sitting around a computer monitor and searching for hilarious internet videos has become a social experience, and feeding that market can be very lucrative. My only fear is that the kids who might get a kick out of such a thing are too jaded to think of the Beasties as anything but old men. How do you feel about the fact that License to Ill is 25 years old Anthony? Or is that too personal a question? (MB)

The new Beasties is a perfect gem, it’s both nostalgia and as-awesome, by which I mean it’s as-awesome as they ever was. I’ve not heard an album since Paul’s Boutique that made me want to get in trouble as much as this one does. The video they made really says it all: it’s of the moment, it evokes their legacy (insane celebrity cameos) and it’s just funky. I mean this, if the album was the first two tracks on repeat for thirty minutes, I’d totally be okay with that. Dance off! (AB)