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Stephen Thomas Erlewine has a fresh article on Sufjan Stevens which basically condemns him for being the teacher’s pet, his music for being too perfect and pretentious, and his subject research as being too “school-report”. Dare I say I sense a bit of jealously in Erlewine’s heart?

The orchestrations and compositions on SMiLE are purposeful — on Illinois, they’re clever-clever and showy, as the ornamentation of the production is there for its own sake, never there to illuminate or enhance Sufjan’s musical or lyrical motifs. Because, apart from the conceit of writing songs about a particular state, there isn’t much connection to the sound or feel of the state in question. Stevens never taps into the musical history of a state — never touching Chicago blues or jazz, or Michigan soul or rock. He simply uses the concept of songs about a state as a vehicle to deliver his baroque folk-pop …

So, Stevens – instead of creating his own sound – must now ape the style of his forebears? Does Erlewine honestly think Stevens would stand out in the indie world by basically being a cover artist? I can see it now: Stevens in the studio, about to record California. “Now, track one will be my Beach Boys song, my tribute to Weezer and The Offspring will be track two, and now I’ll go write my Glen Campbell knockoff.”

Oh, and contrary to the article, Stevens did touch Chicago blues/jazz: see track 21, “Riffs And Variations On A Single Note For Jelly Roll, Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, And The King Of Swing, To Name A Few.”

The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Bodies” – from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness – has got to be one of the more underappreciated songs by the band. The song opens to a tolerable amount of art-noise but quickly gathers speed as Iha’s guitar riffs break through.

Chamberlain’s drumming is top notch as usual, but it’s Billy Corgan’s vocal workout that really defines the song. He alternates from his trademark whine on the verses to a controlled roar on the two choruses (which take part on independent melodies): “But no bodies ever knew” … “Love is suicide”. The latter appears on a strategically placed break, in which Corgan sings over a bed of double or triple tracked (and out of phase) voices droning the words deny, decide, destroy, disobey, disguise. I sense not rage in his words, but acceptance or resolution. Then again, the uncharacteristic guitar chord on the fadeout adds a pinch of discontent.

They could have brought the vocal levels up just a tad and made this a single. Easily.

I saw David Bazan (of Pedro the Lion fame) last night at the Black Cat in DC. His solitary voice was accompanied by only his acoustic guitar, and his playing was competent, save for the handful of requests that he granted on the spur of the moment. He managed to play all five songs from his recent EP, Fewer Moving Parts, albeit spread out over the course of his 70 minute set.

He puzzlingly described the new song “Fewer Broken Pieces” as his saddest song ever. I had been listening to it for for a few days, but didn’t regard it as especially sad. Sometimes, you need someone to sing it to you live for it to set in properly. The lyrics are personal and describe the breakup of Pedro the Lion. Bazan appears to be writing from the deepest part of his heart on this one — there’s no pretense. From that perspective, it is the saddest song he’s written. His stories of infidelity, murder, suicide, and depression are sad in their own ways, but only to the extent that the listener draw parallels between the songs and his own memories. “Fewer Broken Pieces” doesn’t ask much of the listener, but it demands much from Bazan.

Opening first for Bazan was Anousheh Khalili, a young woman who has recently gained some notoriety as the voice on a couple of Deep Dish tracks, “Flashdance” and “Say Hello”. Khalili’s voice begged comparison with Neko Case at first, but it had a sly swagger not unlike that of Fiona Apple.

Following Khalili was Andy Zipf. He, like Bazan, had no band and accompanied himself on an acoustic guitar. His voice sounded at times like Cinjun Tate of Remy Zero, and at other times like Greg Gilbert of the Delays. Toward the end of his set, he did an offbeat cover of “Goodbye, Yellowbrick Road”. I could tell he was struggling a bit with the chord changes; I never really realized what a complex song it was.

Why are there about 441,000 hits on Google for the phrase “riddle me this“, but absolutely no results for the likely answer, “I riddled him that“?

Emil Stenström weighs in with why Inline CSS should not be allowed in strict doctypes:

Inline CSS goes against all the logic involved in the idea of two distinct doctypes. Why should you want to include design information inside of a document that you just explicitly stated would separate the two?

Remember that the word cascading appears in CSS. Inline styles, while not esthetically pleasing, nevertheless allow for economy of code.

If, for instance, you implement a style that appears only once on only one page, than an inline style makes sense. Or, if you find yourself implementing that style in multiple areas of your site, then by all means, place it in an external document.

The beauty of cascading style sheets is that a style can be implemented on a single tag, a single page, or multiple pages, depending upon your desired level of specificity.

I moved into a new office today, albeit temporarily. It’s an attractive location, as the building has direct access to the L’Enfant station. My cube is about 100 feet away from a US Post Office. Dry cleaners? Around 60 feet. Espresso bar? 100 feet. McDonalds? 200 feet or so. Okay, so the last one isn’t really a factor, considering my long-standing aversion to McDonald’s food.

Yes, I know this is a few weeks late, but better late than never. Here are a few of pictures from Miko and Garin’s engagement party (28 May 2006). Funny, I couldn’t even find a single decent picture of both Miko and Garin.

I found an aberration today while using Bon Echo build 2006052616. I was clicking on a link to an html file, but the browser interpreted it as an object to be downloaded. A second later, I saw the file show up in my downloads window. I then tried opening up a blank page using about:blank and Bon Echo actually dumped a zero-length file called “blank” into my downloads directory. Hmm. A simple restart of the browser alleviated the problem, and I haven’t seen the anomaly since.

I was going through the Pearls Before Swine archives at comics.com and noticed this doozy from May 8. Apparently it’s a followup to the famed 14 Nov 2005 strip, in which Pig “makes nice” with Annie-May.

entire strip

“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you” —Nathaniel Hawthorne

My parents actually had a framed poster of this quote hanging in their bathroom for the longest time. It depicted a couple of cartoon children chasing butterflies in a 1970s-ish field of flowers. Why is this relevant today? Because I had one of those moments just recently. You see, it all started when I heard a particular Yo La Tengo song in passing on KEXP-FM. It must have struck a chord with me, because I remembered it and tried to find it. It was growing on me, but I had yet to hear it a second time! I wracked my brain, trying to Google the song by its lyrics. No luck. I thought about going into Yo La Tengo chat rooms and saying, I’m looking for this song, but I don’t know what it’s called and I don’t know the lyrics… I eventually decided against this.

Just the other day, I had my Winamp on shuffle, and all of a sudden, I heard it emanating from my speakers again! Turns out it’s called “Today is the Day” from Summer Sun. Sublime. Slow and deliberate. Earthy. Ethereal. Hazy. Hypnotic. I must have downloaded it off one of my podcasts or something, because I have no recollection of finding it. Totally insane.