Thursday, February 24, 2011

hercules vs. dwight


Hercules and Love Affair is a largely electronic album of catchy tunes on the neo-disco/ classic house end of the dance spectrum. That's cool. It is on the excellent DFA record label. That's also cool. It is even co-produced by DFA big wig Tim Goldsworthy. Again, cool. Anthony Hegarty sings lead vocals on most of the album's tracks: NOT COOL. Repeat: NOT COOL AT ALL. Most of you will be familiar with Antony as Antony of Antony and the Johnsons fame . He has received lots of critical praise, and I think even won the coveted Mercury Prize in the UK. I'm sure he is a talented bloke. But no matter how you slice it, and no matter how many times I try to listen to him with an open mind, the dude just sounds like a freaky drag queen to me. And not just any old freaky drag queen but a freaky old drag queen with a particularly odd vocal resonance. Listening to him makes me feel like I am listening to gay cabaret, which I do not care for. Heck, I don't even like heterosexual cabaret. I just don't like cabaret. Or Antony's voice.

This album gets credit for some nice production and some truly funky beats, but Antony's voice puts a SERIOUS damper on the party for me and prevents any full-fledged enjoyment of the, er, love affair as it were. Eric Rating: 3.0

(Note: However, for Anne's sake, I would like to point out that I would gladly listen to this album over the Weakerthan's Reunion Tour any old day. It blows my mind, but it's true. And I would even more gladly listen to anything by the Beach Boys than either of the aforementioned albums...)




I do not know Dwight Schenk personally. I didn't even know he was a musician before listening to Natural Disasters. And I feel awkward writing about his album knowing that he is in the Death Match and will read what I have to say. But I am determined to be honest and fair. And so...

This was a good listen. Seriously. Lots of reference points jumped out at me, most obviously: Tom Waits. At times Dwight's gravelly voice also bears possible resemblance to David Johansen of the New York Dolls or perhaps the oddball Chuck E. Weiss. The album has a kind of Southern Gothic vibe going on, too, which reminds me of acts like David Eugene Edwards' 16 Horsepower or the quirky Floridian singer-songwriter Jim White. Some of the gentler tunes are reminiscent of Hayden (one of my favorite contemporary Canadian singer-songwriters), and the closing track sounds like a pared down version of a J. Spaceman song/ hymn.

While listening, I tagged 6 songs (half the album) as my favorites: the kick-ass opener "Ruckus", "Hiccup on the Mountain", "Ready for Judgment Day", "New Parade" with its pleasing addition of a female vocalist, the haunting and beautiful "Deeper Waters", and "Oh My Lord". I also tagged two songs as songs to edit off the album: the disorienting "On the Surface of a Flood" and the ear-piercing "Howling: Buffalo". I found both songs aurally, uh, challenging and felt they distracted from the overall flow/ vibe of the album.

Dwight is clearly a creative and often unconventional music man with an abundance of ideas and sonic tricks up the proverbial sleeve of his Canadian rock and roll jacket. I wish him all the best, as he and Natural Disasters advance on in the Death Match with an Eric Rating of: 3.4

13 comments:

  1. I think it's weird that Hercules and Love Affair is apparently composed of a dwarf, a giant, a sultry chick, and Peter Krause (whom you may know as Nathan of Six Feet Under).

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  2. Two Questions:
    1) Have you thought about looking at the median score rather than the mean? I skip over songs I hate, so one bad song won't destroy an album for me.
    2) When you hear "Aruba, Jamaica...," do you think, "Wow...that has to be at least a 3.5 out of 5!"

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  3. @arnoyser:

    1) I am not sure I understand your reasoning for changing from the mean to the median. One bad song didn't drag down either of these albums. I recalculated my scores using the median:

    Hercules: 3.0
    Dwight: 3.5

    Also, my numbers are pretty silly. My intent is not to blind anyone with science, just to have some loose quantification of my opinions.

    2) I am not a huge fan of "Kokomo", although I may find listening to the "Cocktail" motion picture soundtrack as interesting as listening to a number of my assignments in the Death Match thus far.

    The post-script aimed at Anne was merely to tease her as she has been more than vocal in trashing all of my decisions thus far in the game and even suggesting that I may lack soul because of my musical preferences. I just thought I'd dish back a little trash talk.

    And finally, just to be extra-annoying, let me point out that I only assign individual songs whole number ratings. In all honesty, I would probably give "Kokomo" a "3" (i.e., "Decent"). It stirs up a certain nostalgia for my middle school years, and there really is a lot of worse shit out there.

    I'm going to go be quiet now.

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  4. Who remembers when the cast full house joined the beach boys for a version of Kokomo?

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  5. Interesting story about the photo you posted of me:
    This was taken on the day of the santa clause parade in Toronto. I went out to the spot where all the participants of the parade congregate before they head out. The place was swarming with dozens of marching bands. I asked these guys to pose with me as if they were in a rock band with me. They did a great job. In fact, I have since based all my rock poses on theirs.

    That story should bump me up to a 4.

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  6. Also, while I have never been able to escape the Tom Waits comparison, I don't hear it at all. Zip.

    That story should bump me down to a 2.

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  7. that is a totally cool picture...plus the guy in the glasses appears to be fingering some imaginary person...guess he really bought into the rock n roll thing...'evs

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  8. slippers...so the one on the far left isn't shotgun jimmie at age 13? I could have sworn it was.

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  9. Dwight, I forgot to mention that you really do have a lot of cool photos, illustrations, videos, etc. out there on the Web. That probably should have pushed you up to at least a 3.875.

    Andy, I also noted the imaginary Canadian Pie fingering band member...It's hard to tell if he is enjoying himself, totally disgusted, or just really excited.

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  10. Eric Smith - Ok, just stop rubbing salt into the wounds - the damage has been done. I've accepted the fact that the Weakerthans are suffering the fate of so many other greats - and "to be great is to be misunderstood." so be it.
    secondly, i can't believe that we're STILL talking about the f'n beach boys. Didn't Andrew put a moratorium on that?

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  11. @Eric: I wrote a reply a long while ago, but apparently I blew the post.

    In short: I'm a big fan of median over mean in all cases. People talk about running everything in the world like a business; I'm intending to manage everything I can like a school.

    Most people on here probably don't care a bit about sports. That's fine, but I'll still use a sports illustration--watching a little sports on TV is one of my procrastination techniques, especially if there is grading to be done. During a pro game a few years back, a running back had a string of 3 yard runs until he finally broke one for 80 yards. After that, he went back to his 3 yard runs. The genius broadcaster put up some stats and noted that the defense must have made a good adjustment at halftime because "...he averaged over 16 yards a carry in the first half, but then they held him to only 3 yards a carry in the second."

    I find that the median gives a more meaningful representation of a class's performance. On my last test, the median was in the low 80s, with many scores clustered around that. The mean gets pulled down by two scores that were around 40, and that put the mean ~75.

    Therefore...Dwight wins.

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  12. Point well taken, arnoyser. Your examples make sense.

    And like you said: Dwight wins ;-)

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