It’s strange being more or less able to hear myself think while listening to an MSI album. Not a terrible thing, though, and MSI are still heaven-sent if you’ve ever wondered, say, what Britney Spears’ personal life would sound if like set to music by someone who wasn’t trying to sell records to Britney’s audience. They’re still intensely trashy, antic and (sonically) vicious, but no longer all at once all the time. And they’re catchy again. I wish I could stop there and just put this on repeat.

But in a few of these songs Jimmy Urine runs bady afoul of the fact that a male misanthrope who writes songs about women has about five ways to sound like a misogynist fuckwad, and with limited context (i.e. not knowing the guy personally) I can’t tell the difference between

#1: Writing songs whose point is to make you look like a creep (playing with audience/performer relationship)

#2: Meaning to reclaim the whole idea of hostility as being about you, not about whoever you shout at (though this can segue into “Hey, I’m just expressing myself” which is usually a veil for #5)

#3: Just wanting to push people’s buttons

#4: Expecting people to realize you have just as much contempt for men

#5: Actually being a misogynist fuckwad

We suspect from past MSI records that Urine’s feelings about people he hates and/or thinks of only as sex objects are complex and interesting and probably forgivable. But we also suspect from those records that he can weave lyrics a little tighter than “You wouldn’t take no for an answer you fucking BITCH”. That the thread in question is dayglo and looks like it can’t possibly hold weight is beside the point, because he’s done it before.

MySpace, with whole album streaming

If it’s true, as he says in one song, that Beans spent two straight years on tour “damn near homeless” because he got kicked out of his house for constantly cheating with women he met on tour… well, he seems to regret it, but it’s pretty obvious how well it might suit him. A self-reinforcing closed loop that outputs opportunities for Mr. B to fuck and rap is exactly the habitat you’d expect to find a robot Beans occupying in 2108’s hip-hop museum; give him points for realizing he might have made mistakes (and more points for drawing a connection between his father’s early death from cancer and his own more self-inflicted disappearance from his daughter’s life), but there’s no repentance here. The gist of Beans’ lyrics has always been “HEY I AM BEANS CHECK IT OUT”, and perhaps that constant repetition has made him realize that he’s stuck with himself.

(In the context of all that, you have to give him a pass on the record’s one entirely forgettable song: “MVP”, where he sappily addresses a (new?) beloved and confesses that the song was “the hardest to write”. Fair enough.)

So I like Thorns, but even with a softer side showing, Beans hasn’t calmed down at all; his forceful delivery can wear out a listener fast, making all his metaphors about the physical harm that his mic skills do to his rivals unfortunately vivid. And yet I started writing this post meaning it to be positive. At the very least I’m impressed. Beans is a difficult listen and yet it never seems that way while his music is playing. Like I said, self-contained.

MySpace page

Panic At The Disco have been getting some good press for releasing an album of power pop, with the supposed grounding that this is unexpected. I don’t understand it. When early modern “emo” band The Promise Ring turned out to be a power-pop band, I read reviews claiming it was surprising. When Fall Out Boy’s label Decaydance signed The Hush Sound, who turned out to be a power-pop band, I read reviews claiming it was surprising. And suddenly I’m drawing a blank on all the other times this has happened, but seriously, am I missing some part of my brain that would make any of this even slightly weird?

Anyway, the particular bouncy piano + drum schtick that drives most of this Paper Cranes record may be part of the problem. (I think it’s just banging the same chord every beat while the drummer accents the 2 and 4, but I’m not sure. I JUST KNOW IT WHEN I HEAR IT.) There’s still something slightly incongruous about anyone scruffy or hostile riding this style, and maybe that’s the sort of thing the critics respond to.

On Halcyon Days the Paper Cranes pull two other genre exercises– the Clash-dubby “Horse Track” and the New Order/Cure/whatever pastiche “Middle Class Guilt”. I react almost involuntarily to the signifiers in that last one: the bass prominently carrying a melody, the ice-water synth strings, the racing cymbals during the chorus (that last one maybe from playing too much Rock Band); I’m actually kind of glad it doesn’t add up to much, lest I like it just enough to feel conflicted about ultimately disliking it.

It all just makes me sad in a similar way to when, in the course of my elementary-school-age self reconstructing the timeline of the prior few decades of pop culture, I realized that Grease and Happy Days weren’t actually from the 50s. Reuse of culture is great, but with the Paper Cranes (and so many other bands) I get the feeling they know the difference between collage and Mad Libs, and prefer Mad Libs.

From Epicurious, more or less. It is awesome.

1/2 cup mayonnaise [1]
1/3 cup finely chopped watercress leaves
2 teaspoons coarse-grained Dijon mustard
2/3 teaspoon lime juice [2]

1/3 cup water
1/3 cup white cooking wine
1 shallot, thinly sliced
4 fresh parsley sprigs [3]
1 fresh thyme sprig [3]
1 1/4 pounds salmon fillet

Mix first 4 ingredients in small bowl to blend; season to taste with salt and pepper.

Combine water, wine, shallot, parsley, and thyme in large skillet. Place salmon fillets, skin side down, in skillet; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cover skillet tightly and simmer over medium-low heat until salmon is barely opaque in center, about 10 minutes. [4] Remove from heat; let stand, covered, 5 minutes. Transfer salmon to plate. [5] Serve with mayonnaise.

Notes:

[1] This is 2/3 the sauce and half the fish of the original. It made a nice dinner for two people with slight leftovers this way.

[2] The original wanted lemon juice, but we had lime and it turned out well.

[3] We used dried herbs and guessed heedlessly about the equivalences. I think the ratio of parsley to thyme was probably more like 1:1 than 4:1.

[4] The first time I made this, we started it on medium-low heat, which meant it took about 8 minutes to even reach a simmer, and another not-quite-ten to cook through. The second time, we had it on high heat until it boiled, then reduced it to simmer low, and the results were chewier. The first way was better AND it boiled off enough of the liquid that the soggy herbs + shallot could be scraped up and used as an additional topping for contrast.

[5] Only once we were about to dig in did we notice the original recipe said to chill the fish for four hours and serve cold. Screw that! The temperature contrast between mayonnaise and fish was one of the things I liked about this.

Separating watercress leaves from stalks is finicky work, but overall this is a very quick recipe for two people.