Thursday, December 18, 2014

Top 2014 Albums

The time has again come to have a look at the past year in music and post my favorite albums.

One of the privileges of a Spotify premium subscription is the ability to listen to most new music as it's published. This is eroding, as music publishers rebel against Spotify's stingy royalty payout policies, and most of the new stuff coming out in Spotify's weekly offerings is pure crap. However, the list below contains 25 albums in chronological release order, all great. I've left out even more good, but not great albums (in my opinion) and so 2014 was definitely a good year for rock despite the infantile utterings of many pundits and people of my generation claiming that rock is dead and that nothing good has been made since the '70s (or whatever decade they're nostalgic for).

Without further ado, here they are. I give some info about each album and why I liked it. 

Artist   - Dum Dum Girls 
Album - Too True
Note -  Laid back, sleek indie melodies. One of the year's favs amongst the college crowd. 


Artist   - +++ (Crosses) 
Album - +++ (Crosses)
Note - This is a side project of Deftones' Chino Moreno and Far guitarist Shaun Lopez. Mostly chill stuff, a great listen with a few true standout tracks. 



Artist   - Real Estate
Album - Atlas
Note - Real Estate are an upcoming indie band from Brooklyn, and this album illustrates why. Pretty laid back, your neighbors won't complain.



Artist   - Drive By Truckers
Album - English Oceans
Note - Drive By Truckers appeal to the redneck side of me (what, you didn't know??). Some really good southern rock tracks here for all truckers and those jealous of truckers.


Artist   - The Hold Steady
Album - Teeth Dreams
Note - The Hold Steady are a gritty NYC band playing pretty awesome hard rock music. Each song here is a mini-story in its own.










Artist   - Sevendust
Album - Time Travelers and Bonfires
Note - If you're a Sevendust fan, this one doesn't disappoint. If not, it's time for you to become one. Sevendust is one of the best to come out of the grunge era.












Artist   - Ryley Walker
Album - All Kinds Of You
Note - A sweet surprise, like a summer afternoon breeze (not to overuse the term). Laid back guitar melodies, lots of pretty awesome acoustic guitar work in this one.




Artist    - Woods
Album  - With Light and With Love
Note - Psychedelia at its best. Close your eyes and imagine yourself in San Francisco 1968's summer of love. If you're too young for that, just light a joint and you'll get the idea. (I haven't had a joint lately, so will have to just think of the 60's)










Artist    - Pixies
Album  - Indie Cindy

Note - Pixies! what else to say? Great new material from the iconic indie band.


Artist    - Wye Oak
Album  - Shriek
Note - See my notes on the Dum Dum Girls album. Pretty much the same story here.











Artist    - Ray LaMontagne
Album  - Supernova
Note - Ray LaMontagne is a folk rock singer, crafting original and compelling tunes. Or in other words, a sleeper album that grows on you with time.











Artist    - Mastodon
Album  - Once More 'Round The Sun
Note - Most of my family and friends don't share my obsession with this Altanta-based hard rock outfit. This albums ranks with their very best and if you ever need a good head banger, this is the one to choose.











Artist    - Wunder Wunder
Album  - Everything Infinite
Note - Psychedelia, pretty chill. 











Artist    - Rise Against
Album  - The Black Market
Note - Punk, pretty aggro. But the music? awesome. 











Artist    - Big Wreck
Album  - Ghosts
Note - A Canadian band I had never heard of, but turns out they're pretty big north of the 49. This is honestly one of the best rock albums I've ever heard.











Artist    - Biffy Clyro
Album  - Similarities
Note - See notes for Big Wreck, except these lads are from Scotland. Aye!











Artist    - Spoon 
Album  - They Want My Soul
Note - Can Spoon get any better? These guys improve from album to album. Awesome.










Artist    - Johnny Marr
Album  - Playland
Note - Johnny Marr is the legendary Smiths guitarist who followed up on his 2013 solo release with this great album. Regrettably, he had to cancel his Seattle show earlier this month, but I hope to catch him next time.











Artist    - Royal Blood
Album  - Royal Blood
Note - First album for this really good band, sounding like The White Stripes on steroids. A must.











Artist    - Interpol
Album  - El Pintor
Note - Interpol fans will like this, even though it isn't their best release. A few standout tracks more than compensate for weakness in other ones.










Artist    - Temples
Album  - Sun Structures
Note - Laid back psychedelia. The very best.











Artist    - Weezer
Album  - Everything Will Be Alright In The End
Note - Weezer got their mojo back and everyone's invited to enjoy it. I look forward to seeing them in January.











Artist    - Yellowcard
Album  - Lift a Sail
Note - I was never a huge Yellowcard fan but this must rank as their very best, the melodies are really catchy.











Artist    - Billy Idol
Album  - Kings & Queens of the Underground
Note - Wow! I was never a huge Billy Idol fan in the day, but he goes all in on this album, track after track of hard driving melodic rock. I can't stop listening to this one.










Artist    - Foo Fighters
Album  - Sonic Highways
Note - A few of the recent FF releases kind of pissed me off, because I felt they were too loud and weak on the fundamentals (aka melodies). This one brings it back for me though, and with standout tracks like Outside and Subterranean you can't go wrong.


Sunday, July 13, 2014

Does Israel Have a Strategy?

The latest round of violence between Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Hamas, has produced the usual reaction from pundits left, center and right.

While the USA mainstream media reports mainly on civilian casualties in Gaza, it tempers that reporting with responses from IDF spokespersons and "confidential" sources confirming that bombs hitting mosques (for example) are an error in targeting. Israel makes the legitimate claim that its actions are defensive in nature against rocket launches, and selective to the perpetrators and their supporters. It also sends advance warnings to neighborhoods about to be bombed - at least, in some cases.

From the left, we hear the usual barrage of attacks on Israel, the "imperialist mad dog" of the middle east, killing hundreds of Palestinian innocents while suffering few to no casualties themselves.

Equally concerning, from the right I see from within some of the Israeli public suggestions to loosen the legal constraints  put on IDF by the Israeli justice department, in order to conduct a much more destructive bombing campaign that would finally end Palestinian aggression. I have just had a fairly testy exchange of Facebook comments with a relative, in reaction to his post that i perceived to be urging in that vein.

Through all of this, I'd like to try and take a longer view into the sources of this conflict and possible ways forward. It seems that Israel, with all the justification it has to defend its citizens from violence by Palestinian militias (such as the recent abduction and killing of 3 Israeli teenagers), has sort of lost its way in defining what it sees as the possible "end game" to this tragic tango. Yes, P.M. Netanyahu had agreed to move forward  on negotiations for a permanent settlement with the Palestinian authority, with the establishment of a Palestinian state in mind - but shortly thereafter did everything he could to sabotage the possibility of those negotiations actually taking place.

One could argue that for Israel, if it ain't broke don't fix it - or in other words, the Palestinians are losing this war and that Israel today is a much stronger entity than it was even in 2000 and the "second Intifada" started. From many respects this is true - anyone visiting modern day Israel is quickly impressed by the strength of its economy, infrastructure and diversity of population - not to speak of its military which is truly a fearsome machine. So, even if Israel has to endure the odd rocket campaign, it will inevitably come out on top and move on to worry about more mundane issues such as internal government politics and the secular-religious tensions between Jews.

Yet, I believe this current state hides a vulnerability that ultimately can't be ignored, and that is the demographic time bomb. Simply put, there are approximately 7 million Jews in Israel and the West Bank, and about 6 million Muslim Arabs in those same territories (including Gaza). Over time, this number will reach parity. Now, with Israel having established a major suburban project in the West Bank and the outskirts of Jerusalem since 1973 (aka the Settlements), it has an inherent problem in
that Israel in its current state will soon have a minority Jewish population, and without the establishment of a Palestinian state,  will face a legitimate claim to equal citizenship by any Muslim Arab living in the "Greater Israel". So, Israel cannot permanently annex the territories it conquered in the 1967 war and remain a Jewish state*; but it also can't practically define what exactly its borders with the Palestinian state will be, since the settlers and their representatives in Government will topple any Government that even starts to negotiate a removal of settlements from the West Bank. That is the crux of the dilemma it faces.

(* Jewish State - not as a state that discriminates against non-Jews but as national expression of the Jewish people for a homeland, much like Ireland for the Irish. "Jewish" - as in nation, not religion.)

On a personal note, I lived in Israel and served in its military in the late 1970's when the peace agreement with Egypt was concluded. I also - for a time - studied at a Yeshiva, a theological seminary in Gush Etzion, part of the West Bank which had actually been included in the original pre-1948 borders. At the time, some of my colleagues decided to stay and establish new settlements in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), with the support of Israel's government that with the change over from left to right wing leadership, ended the "benign occupation" in favor of a more repressive regime. In discussions with them, I expressed my concern that their settling in the midst of Palestinian population centers would create needless tensions (in 1981 the West Bank and Gaza were mostly peaceful), and they dismissed me with a laugh and the statement "who cares about the Arabs". Well, now we and they are reaping what we have sown and there is now an entire generation of Palestinians taught to hate and resist the Israeli oppressor.

So which way forward? In the current Israeli political configuration, with right wing parties in control, it's hard to see any radical changes to the current approach. Yet some say, the same was said for Menachem Begin, the right wing P.M. who (with the help of Moshe Dayan) negotiated a peace agreement with Egypt and Arik Sharon, the right wing P.M. who dramatically withdrew Israel's Gaza settlements.  The problem is that the right wing today represents over half a million West bank settlers, and they enjoy the support of the majority of Israeli jews. You can't realistically establish a Palestinian state and keep all of the settlements in place, hence Israel's reluctance to truly deal with the issue.
Also, given Hamas' propensity to violence in the face of moderation (e.g. rockets following Israel's Gaza withdrawal), Israel has trouble in identifying a credible partner to negotiate with.

With all of this, I'd like to see a centrist party like Yesh Atid take control after the next Israeli election, and lead a pragmatic way forward with partners from both the moderate left and right wings of Israel.
Yesh Atid has crafted a well thought out platform to solving the conflict, one that recognizes all parties' right to exist in peace and outlines which settlements will remain and which will be removed under a potential agreement. Yair Lapid, leader of Yesh Atid, has repeatedly called out for Israel to be proactive in outlining its future desirable borders and to engage with the Palestinian authority in a meaningful negotiation. So far he has been stymied by his right wing coalition partners; my hope is that his approach will win out in the long term.


Monday, May 25, 2009

Music Database

Wow! Thanks to the long weekend, I finally got to updating the my music database on my new work laptop. This is a big deal for me because I like to create auto-playlists along themes, like "hard", "mellow" etc. and then play them in the background wherever I am. I use MediaMonkey Gold for this since it was the only program I found that allows you to define your own meta-data and then use the user-defined values as criteria for playlists.

The new laptop (a Dell E64000) has 250 GB HD space, so no lack of space for all of the MP3's I want, and I did add quite a bit from the backup drive at home.

Of course! This wasn't the reason I got the laptop. My old one, a Dell D600 was starting to show signs of slow death and besides crashing in a very bad way a few weeks ago (and in line with Murphy's Law, just before a major demo), it tended to send its hard drive into a spin every few hours, causing major slowdown.

So now, I not only have the benefit of a new laptop for professional purposes, but it will be a better music companion in the office, at home or on the road.

Yes I do have some beefs with Dell and the crap they pre-install, making life miserable for millions of customers. More on that in a separate post.