I avoid posting negative opinions here because (a) as a respectable journalist I try to hide them, at least on controversial issues (b) why hurt feelings when you don’t have to (c) if you don’t particularly like to take it, don’t dish it out.

That said, the Titus Andronicus Daytrotter session raises such ire in my heart that I’ll finally write what I always say: I appreciate the service Daytrotter provides—giving bands online exposure and a mid-tour Midwest stopover—but the writing on that site is godawful. Meaningless, pretentious dreck. Emperor = no clothes.

(And they speak so well of me.)

See:
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Exiting out of a two-day romp through lax responsibilities, late nights that in all likelihood led to debauchery or dreams of debauchery (or at the very least defacing of property or drunken stupors) and paying for it the next morning or mornings is at the core of what makes the group tick, or at least excites them into detailing matters. A story gets to the point where it’s worth retelling over and again when there’s some piece of it that borders on idiocy, nefariousness or poor judgment. We get to be where we are in life by making the mistakes we’ve made under the influence of alcohol, pounding ourselves into submission through a bender or three. These are the professors – these stints of overindulgence – that teach us that maybe bars are not the best places to find the person you’re going to marry, that too much of a good thing isn’t just a cliché for wieners to throw around as if they know something, that nothing good usually does happen after midnight and that sometimes it’s funny how little provocation it takes to decide it would be a hoot to throw a brick threw someone’s rearview window. We meet our enemies and our friends at the end of these nights and we rough them up for good or bad. The people we love get tested and we give ourselves a trying time. Titus Andronicus, named for the William Shakespeare tragedy that was known for its excessive gore and violence as a Roman general by that name seeks revenge on everyone he knows, gives us a good mind to either pop tops or twist them just to stay even with them so we can continue following along with the curvy, down on the floor romancing of sloppiness – unforgettable sloppiness like the stuff that The Replacements brought to the stage on many nights, the sloppiness of legend that feels like spittle on the sides of cheeks and glass in your forehead. They flatter us with brilliance in shaggy aloofness, trickling out Pavement-like unhingings and adding onto the sundae the kinds of poetry that come to the intelligent after three bottles of wine or whatever’s handy. There’s no pretension and no posturing….
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At least use paragraph breaks so I have a chance at following along. Compare to the band’s notes on a song from that session (presumably by frontman Patrick Stickles).

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This song is in G major, also in 4/4, and maybe about 80 bpm, a real dirge. This song was written while trying to recall how to play the guitar solo from “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd, of all things. “No Future” was the original title of “God Save The Queen” by the Sex Pistols, which I think is a much better title than “God Save The Queen,” personally. Their loss was my gain. This song is very miserable, to an almost ridiculous extent. I was recording a demo of it once in the performing arts building at the college I went to, and a girl came up and yelled at me because my guitar playing was interfering with the musical that was about to begin downstairs.
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Lyric-writers 1, lyricism 0.
xx
djd

Just read Grant Alden’s essay nominally on country songwriter Chris Knight.

I have to say—and this is not me kissing up to a former-and-maybe-future editor—Grant, though his NoDepression.com title “curmudgeon emeritus” is no joke, takes my breath away with this. I don’t know how he gets away with telling this story and not falling into pure schmaltz. He does, though, I think.

The essay starts:

This is all about Chris Knight and why you should listen to his new album, the one called Heart Of Stone, and why it may be the best album he’s ever made even if nobody much cares at this point. But it’s a long story, and it digresses some.

It begins here: After sixteen months in Los Angeles, I flew to Nashville blind and rented an apartment in Tusculum, at the edge of town, from an old man named Guy P. He had lost his wife to cancer, and so he looked for people to talk to, but he warned me that he heard poorly and I should take care not to creep up behind him because he’d think I was Charley, and he might kill me. He was a big man, a powerful man, even in his 70s.

Not incidentally Grant expresses something of the heartbreak I’ve felt over many intense songwriters—that “even if nobody much cares at this point” perfectly Eeyoreish throwaway-on-purpose clause, and:

… there was this song: “If I Were You”, a sharply written morality play, a short story in song form, a gut-wrenching bit of unflinching social commentary. It was and is an amazing piece of work.

If not a blessing, for it is not entirely clear that Chris Knight has written or will write another song that good. Or, maybe, having heard that, we now expect it of him and are less receptive to anything else, and can no longer be surprised by the eloquent bleakness of his vision.

Read it.

Though I do think you can stop when he starts to critique Knight’s new album. … perhaps nobody much cares at this point? More like I stopped listening to Mary Gauthier, for one, because the high-profile album didn’t match up to the earlier albums, and I couldn’t imagine she could ever knock me down again.
xox
djd