Music-a-lingus

Current Music: Sum 41: Does This Look Infected? This morning's lecture on Freud's "The Sexual Aberrations" went over like a lead balloon; apparently only one student (who happens to be a grad and a friend) could identify with polymorphous perversity. No one was resistant or confused or turned on or had an "ah-ha": just a sea of tired and bored faces. So, like, when did Freud become so boring? For Christ's sake, the (w)hole essay is about licking or sucking private parts and the ecstasies of fetishism.

Speaking of boredom, I've been in the musical doldrums until two days ago. My newfound passion for The Delays two months ago led to wearing that album slap out (although I still love it; again, it's like a mix of my lust for ethereal goth and brit pop). Oh, if only they had two albums to exploit. Well, joy of joys, Ben said that Fischerspooner's newest, Odyssey, had hit the Internet. So I found it and downloaded it and, hurrah! It's delicious. I also discovered the Dove's Some Cities is out too, and it's brilliant, although not delicious. Delicious is given for sexual aberrations, the musical equivalent of oral sex. Fabulous is reserved for intellectual and emotional depth, though not anything aberrant or that makes me want to lick an armpit (viz., maschalingus).

Brilliance first: the Doves' new album has more rollicking beats--at least for the first couple of tracks, but then settles in for a long moan. It's downbeat and yearning, and the vocalists soulful sound reminds one of what it's like to be trapped indoors during a snowstorm.

Now, for the delicious: the new Fischerspooner is much less an eighties throw-back. Gone are the fake handclaps that punctuated almost every song on #1. The minimalist aesthetic and feel of the former is gone. These have been replaced with the sound of treated guitars on a number of tracks (some electric, some acoustic), more of a funky beat, and more earnest vocals. One upbeat dance track, "We Need a War," even has something of a political stance! Gone is the snotty cliché of the first album ("Wake up and smell the artifice!"), which I really loved; instead a number of the tracks have a glossy earnestness that reveals something less mechanical and cold, here more vulnerable and open. The album is musically much more complicated, but underneath the lacquer, sonic tongues flicker and flit about throughout. You can dance to it, too. Of course, insofar as the visual is inseparable from the Fischerspooner thing, I'm now really hot for another live show!