Roger Dodger

What is this? Update #4 today? I think I already once talked about in more detail than I am willing to do so right now about the correlation between the frequency of posts and the boredom of the poster. Right now, it is not so much that, although I could very well just be telling myself that, and also telling you that to leave you with a better presentation of myself before you head off to bed, or, if you are there already, to leave you a better picture waiting for you early in the morning.

Hi!

I am listening to the Knife's Silent Shout right now, and this album I have done a total turn around on with regards to my critical perception of it. Actually, this is the third time with this album. On first listen, a month or two ago, I dismissed it right off the bat as bad electronica that I would hear late at night on one of South Florida's radio stations. I still think it is that type of music, but now I really like it. But that is getting ahead of the detailing I am trying to undertake of the evolution of my thoughts on this album by a band whose last album I really enjoyed for its sheer pop exuberance which still makes me dance like a fucking gay maniac and get the fuck out of my wayness. Then there was that Pitchfork review a couple weeks ago which listed this album as "Best New Music," better than even their "Recommended New Music," and I say that that publication doesn't have too much impact upon my own critical perceptions of new music, but I have to admit, after reading that review, I felt like I was missing something, that if this authority on music thought it was amazing, well hey, maybe it is. And I listened and again thought it just sounded like music I had heard a million times on Ecstasy that Anne or one of her DJ friends would have playing as I rubbed Vicks under my nostrils, and I was mad that this Pitchfork writer was giving all this credit to the Knife for doing "new" things with electronica, was certain that they never spent any QT in South Florida. Pitchfork patted itself on the back for referring to it as "haunted house," and I have heard scary dance music before, anyone on drugs has. Though, that is clever, that haunted house phrase, that I will give you credit for PF.

And that opinion of Eh-it's-allright was in place until yesterday when one of the songs from it came up when I had my music on random. It was just what I was in the mood for and then I listened to the whole album and rocked the fuck out. And today, when I rode the subway and waited for what seemed like forever for it, going to see the regular after flaking out on my interview, I listened to this album and it sounds so good through headphones, really fucking loud on the subway.

I think the reason I didn't really take to it so much before was because I was too aware when hearing it on my speakers of how it sounded to other people, how Adele might have thought I was listening to cheesy dance music, but with it coming through my headphones, I don't give a fuck and dance and bob like a crazy person to this music. I couldn't imagine dancing to these songs in public though, have an image of Anne doing some goofy glowstick dance when I hear some of the songs and try to picture it being played somewhere. And then I started to follow another repeated thought pattern I have already elaborated upon here earlier, about the type of music the bars I go to tend to play. That Deep Cuts seems a little more suited to New York dance floors than the slow, dark rhythms of this album, and that's why I am digging this album so much because it is allowing me to move my body in ways that I have not been doing so in a while, because when you are dancing to Pulp's "Common People" (which I like, but still, give it a rest) or whatever standard song that every douche bag with a CD booklet plays, that you do the same sort of dance to it and let's do new things, move our bodies in laughable, awkward, uncool ways. Because I am so tired of playing it safe, of playing these roles, these dance moves. I want to think of my body in new ways, of new relations to sounds, basically, I want to be alive and this album makes me feel a little more so these days.