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Hello, my name is Marcel, I live in Santa Cruz, California, and I am 13-years-old and a sprouting music critic who is also working on forming a band. On this blog I will post my album and song reviews, along with tour dates of your favorite bands and the daily top music news right now! P.S. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, My Bloody Valentine, Pavement, Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan are my favorite artists of all time. Follow on Twitter: @MarcelTheCritic
Introduction to Marcel's Music Journal!
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LIVE REVIEW: Tame Impala and Jonathan Wilson at Oakland’s Fox Theater (5/29)
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(Tame Impala performing. Photo by Marcel)
We parked our car around the block from Oakland’s premiere music venue, the Fox Theater, with it’s eye-popping Beaux Arts architecture. Strolling up the street I noticed a gate behind which the band’s tour bus was parked and there was Tame Impala having a fun time playing frisbee. I told my Mom, “There they are!” and I ran over to the gate, thrilled to be in the presence of psychedelic gods. I saw frontman Kevin Parker strumming his guitar, minding his own business. I smiled and waved to Parker and he happily waved back. I called him over. “Hey there”, he said with a smile. “How are you doing?” Excitedly I replied, “I’m good!” Separated by the eight foot high metal gate he said “I’d shake your hand but I think that’s impossible.” I told him that I was a music journalist and a big fan and he replied, “Ah, that’s cool.” I attended the show that night as his guest!
After me and my Mom got some eats and walked around for a little to near-by shops, we sat on a planter box in the sun next to the line of the sold-out crowd. I noticed that people were wearing other band t-shirts, such as The Doors, the Killers, Bon Iver, and Arcade Fire. That’s something that I love about Oakland…so many colorful people. Such a lively city it is. We enter the Fox overwhelmed by the beauty of the interior. Early-20th Century pendant lighting, deco carpeting and Moorish architectural details throughout. In the lobby was the merchandise stand where they sold Tame Impala vinyl and t-shirts. The opening act, folk singer-songwriter Jonathan Wilson — who has produced and credited albums from artists like Dawes, Father John Misty, Fleet Foxes, Modest Mouse, The Shins, and more — also was represented at the stand, where he had psychedelic clothing and copies of his excellent debut solo LP Gentle Spirit. Many music bloggers have questioned why “his excellence hasn’t been reviewed on Pitchfork already” and have also stated that an Wilson/Impala concert is more important than a Rolling Stones concert. Wilson is a long-haired dude who definitely deserves some recognition. Him and his backing-band have an Allman Brothers, southern rock sound to them while Wilson’s vocals are reminiscent of Tom Petty.
(read the rest)
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Marcel the 13-year-old music journalist interviews Milo Greene on August 8th in Santa Cruz, California!
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This is me with Greg Ginn (left) and Ron Reyes of Black Flag. Was going to do a video interview but they said that they retired from doing Q&A’s. Still got to take a photo and chat with one of my all-time favorite punk bands, though!
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Julia Holter - Loud City Song ALBUM REVIEW
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Loud City Song, Julia Holter’s third LP, is her most polished and dramatically arranged release to-date. Its an album that you have to listen to quite a few times to finally get its graciously and hauntingly beautiful concept. It’s not an LP where you say, ‘Oh, I like that song a lot’, or, ‘Oh, this one track really stands-out to me’. Loud City Song is an album that you appreciate as a whole. Essentially, this whole LP could be one extended version of “World” or “In The Green Wild”. Loud City Song not only has that adventurous concept to it, but it is an album of a true art form, where each song documents an excerpt of a passerby’s life in the city. Loud City Song is the soundtrack to the film that Holter has been shooting in her head ever since the beginning of her career. And anyone she sees, anyone she witnesses walking past her, is a star in her movie.
The opening track “World” projects mesmerizing visuals while you listen, meanwhile Holter’s hauntingly mellow mood washes over you like a wave crashing onto a seaside.
Many words can be put into this review that can describe the many artifacts hidden in the tracks on Loud City Song, but one thing you have to know if you’re going to listen to this LP, is that it’s a very free-range album that lets loose until its very last chord. It’s an experimental wunderkind that unfolds Holter’s many song-worthy experiences before our very eyes.
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MGMT performed “Your Life is a Lie” on Thursday night’s episode of Late Night with David Letterman. And if you’re looking for one of the year’s most excruciating performances, well then click play above.
While I still can’t even begin to describe how horrible it was, let me just say this; Watching Andrew VanWyngarden (who looks like a funked-out street person) bang an enormous cowbell for three minutes hardly keeps you awake at the time Letterman's musical guest comes on.
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Marcel the 13-year-old music journalist interviews Ty Segall on August 1st in Santa Cruz, California!
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Locrian - Return to Annihilation ALBUM REVIEW
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On Deafheaven’s Sunbather, you had an album that was a raw and hauntingly beautiful collection of stories. On Chicago Drone Rock trio Locrian’s latest LP, Return to Annihilation, you get an equally awe-inspiring tale that dominates and soars like a rock opera.
Combining the elements of experimental music, black metal, drone music, ambient, and hints of progressive rock, doom and noise metal, Return to Annihilation is as chilling as its album cover. Though it’s not so tongue-in-cheek; Locrian’s brain-rattling art-form makes it overwhelmingly impossible not to fall into its beautiful yet horrifying abyss that it contains. And you get all of this, just from the first two tracks. On the three-minute opener “Eternal Return” you have these very atmospheric and progressive chord changes that makes it so incredibly moody. Tracks like that on here don’t necessarily bring anything new to the table, but it just embraces you and tricks your mind so interestingly you can’t help but wonder if Locrian use some kind of Black magic in the studio.
But all evil and supernatural powers aside, Return to Annihilation makes you feel at home but yet makes you feel like you’re being kidnapped from your home. There’s two very intriguing sides of the LP’s story here, and shockingly, they both deliver exceptionally well. And it’s because of this that it makes it so easy to get lost in the album’s spell.
(read the rest)
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Marcel, the 13-year-old music journalist, does an audio interview with Karen, Nick and Brian of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz, California.
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Big Sean’s new non-album track/single, “Control (HOF)”, has everybody talking. From Tweeters to Redditors to XXL Magazine. But is all of this social media and Internet-frenzy about Big Sean, the man who has headlining credit for this track? No. Not at all in fact. ...
While I am not too crazy about the whole “one of the most important moments in hip-hop history” thing that’s going on right now, I will agree that this is at least some sort of landmark not only for Kendrick but for the whole hip-hop community. The only downside about Kendrick’s verse is that I find it sad that it’s on the same song as a mainstream pop rapper such as Big Sean. It sorts of pulls away from that hip-hop landmark thing for me, but Kendrick’s verse embraces you so much you forget that Big Sean even exists. And I’m pretty sure that’s what Big Sean worried about in the studio when they recorded this.
I am indeed surprised that Kendrick didn’t mention people like Joey Bada$$ on the verse, but it is still by far one of the most ferocious and best things to happen to rap music in a long, long time. And this is coming from a dedicated hip-hop follower, blogger and critic. And for all of the other hip-hop followers, bloggers and critics out there, I salute you in this exciting, probably once-in-a-lifetime, event for rap lovers everywhere.
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LIVE REVIEW: Devendra Banhart at Santa Cruz’s Rio Theatre (5/18)
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A willowy guy standing on the corner, bendy short dark hair, scruffy beard and mustache, in a wool cardigan, t-shirt and skinny green jeans. Could’ve been any UCSC student on his way to get a taco, but it was Devendra Banhart, standing unnoticed right across the street from his fans queuing up outside of the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz. I walked with him down the street to the Tropical Nail Salon where he needed to have a nail mended, “I don’t use a pick when I play guitar.” Seems he had a scag on a nail that needed refining. I told him I loved his fiancée Ana’s designs, “I do too” was his quick, lovey-dovey response. I felt like I could’ve continued with, “And I love her hair”…”So do I”…”And I love her eyes”…”So do I”. “She’s just landed in New York” he tells me, as if the gushing brings her a little closer. You can really tell this guy’s in love. But now that love is going to have to be long distance as he sets off on tour in support of his new album Mala.
The Rio Theatre is a laid-back intimate venue (700 seats). No knuckle-head security presence, no monster video screen over the stage. More like a hippie venue from another time. The perfect place for just folks, playing freak folk.
The show opened with Rodrigo Amarante doing a half solo set and joined by musicians for the second half. All were the support band for Devendra. The whole night felt like a multi-cultural experience: Rodrigo and his native Brazilian sounds, wooing the crowd with his Portuegese crooning and master guitaro work…Devendra entered the stage with the greeting “Guten tag” to which the crowd replied in kind. “Oh, we have a lot of Germans in the crowd tonight?” His Venezuelan upbringing spicing the night, ending each song with “Gracias” and at one point breaking into a monologue entirely in Spanish.
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Marcel the 13-year-old music journalist interviews William Tyler on August 1st 2013 in Santa Cruz, California!
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... Kanye turns great ideas into his own ego-maniac extravaganza, making Yeezus' party a lot less fun. “I'm in It” almost seems like a joke at first, but then you realize that Kanye is actually being serious with this raunchy and pitiful fail of a club-starter. Kanye's samples also seem to get very messy at times, such as on the closing track to Yeezus, “Bound 2”, where you have two samples that when combined make a horrible mess. I find it very sad that Kanye would rip-off a great independent act such as Death Grips to make millions of off an LP that isn’t that good. Just the very thought of that makes Yeezus such a forced and unenjoyable listen for me. Kanye has taken a new turn through a strange and dark new passageway, but when Kanye acts like Kanye it is a very disappointing turn of events. Yeezus is a quick and strange representation of Kanye’s non-stop paranoia, and it finds many potholes in the road ahead but fails to avoid them. If this is what the future will be like, then the apocalypse is going to come a lot sooner than we thought.
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Earl Sweatshirt - Doris ALBUM REVIEW
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Back in 2010, when Earl Sweatshirt was only a newly introduced member on Odd Future’s Radical tape, Earl — along with the rest of the OF members — were anything but complex and forward-thinking. I’m not dissing their tape here, it was a pretty decent release. But all I’m saying is that it seemed like none of the members had what it took to release a solid rap tape or an LP.
Despite all of this, Earl seemed to be the one who stood out the most in his crew. And ever since he started rapping with Tyler and the Gang, I had high hopes for him all the way. Even on last year’s OF Tape Vol. 2, Earl is what helped make that album stay afloat.
And now that Earl has released his highly-anticipated debut full-length, Doris, I can now say that my high hopes are now fulfilled.
With some pretty excellent singles that got dropped before the LP’s release, which are “Chum”, “Whoa”, and ”Hive”, Doris was easily one of my most anticipated rap releases of this year. And to be honest, I’ve never hyped an Odd Future release before.
But what makes Doris such a solid album is that it doesn’t take any crap whatsoever. Something that I wish Tyler, the Creator’s releases would do more of. Doris is an LP that essentially readies the world for Earl, and vice versa.
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Favorites of 2013
Basically this list is where I keep an archive of LPs, EPs, and tracks that I have given 4 (or more) stars out of 5 of this year. This list will be updated regularly!
LPs/EPs:
A$AP Rocky - Long.Live.A$AP
Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold
Burial - Truant / Rough Sleeper EP
Foxygen - We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic
Yo La Tengo - Fade
Ben Harper with Charlie Musselwhite - Get Up!
Mountains - Centralia
Nas - Illmatic [Reissue]
Tegan and Sara - Heartthrob
Ex Cops - True Hallucinations
Golden Grrrls - Self-Titled
Jim James - Regions Of Light And Sound Of God
Adam Green & Binki Shapiro - Self-Titled
Fleetwood Mac - Rumors [Reissue]
K-X-P - II
Diamond Youth - Orange EP
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away
Four Tet - 0181
The Who - Live at Hull 1970
Widowspeak - Almanac
Pissed Jeans - Honeys
My Bloody Valentine - m b v
Atoms for Peace - AMOK
Iceage - You’re Nothing
Grouper - The Man Who Died In His Boat
Young Boys - New York Sun
Youth Lagoon - Wondrous Bughouse
Shlohmo - Laid Out EP
Steven Wilson - The Raven That Refused To Sing (And Other Stories)
At the Drive-In - Acrobatic Tenement [Reissue]
The Thermals - Fuckin A [Reissue]
The Thermals - The Body, the Blood, the Machine [Reissue]
Wavves - Afraid of Heights
Phosphorescent - Muchacho
Waxahatchee - Cerulean Salt
Blu - York
Albert King - Born Under a Bad Sign [Deluxe Edition Reissue]
Kurt Vile - Wakin On A Pretty Daze
The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
The Flaming Lips - The Terror
James Blake - Overgrown
White Fence - Cyclops Reap
Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin
The Haxan Cloak - Excavation
The Postal Service - Give Up [10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]
Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light
Mikal Cronin - MCII
Deerhunter - Monomania
Chance the Rapper - Acid Rap
Savages - Silence Yourself
The So So Glos - Blowout
Austin Paul - Velvet EP
Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
The National - Trouble Will Find Me
R.E.M. - Green [25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]
Majical Cloudz - Impersonator
Pharmakon - Abandon
Dirty Beaches - Drifters/Love Is the Devil
Disclosure - Settle
Queens of the Stone Age - …Like Clockwork
Nails - Abandon All Life
Deafheaven - Sunbather
Young Fathers - Tape Two
Portugal. The Man - Evil Friends
Thundercat - Apocalypse
Sigur Rós - Kveikur
Smith Westerns - Soft Will
Public Image Ltd. - First Issue [Reissue]
Run the Jewels - Self-Titled
James Holden - The Inheritors
Stara Rzeka - Cień Chmury nad Ukrytym Polem
Fuck Buttons - Slow Focus
Vuyvr - Eiskalt
Locrian - Return to Annihilation
All Pigs Must Die - Nothing Violates This Nature
Earl Sweatshirt - Doris
Julia Holter - Loud City Song
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p.s. Hey. Someone here intro'd me to Marcel's Music Journal, and I can't remember who that was in my semi-wakefulness of the moment, but thanks to you. ** S., I'm back, and so are you! I went to the Loire Valley in good old France. I always jump Halloween's gun, so it's only Halloween in my head and consequently blog. Right, your Mothman Festival. Definitely an important accouterment. Pix of that are suggested and requested, yeah. Whoa, everyone, courtesy of S., go watch a slice of 'Kiss Meets The Phantom Lolz'. Kiss as in Kiss. And also, there's a photo of S.'s mouth with a new subtle yet fierce piercing, if you like. He calls it 'Keep your Robbe-(Grill)et real =)' ** David Ehrenstein, Nice call on the hopping octopus. I think there's always light at every tunnel's end, or I guess I think deciding there isn't is counterproductive or something. But, yeah, it's a scary, awful thing. ** Matty B, Hi, Matty. Good question on what Brautigan means to lit history. I seems to change about ten years or so, whatever it is. Oh, fuck, Jesus, yeah, 'Rope' blurbage. I really would forget my head of it wasn't screwed on, in my mother's way of putting things. Sorry, sorry. Got it, date-wise. Sweet re: the new 32 pages! ** Bill, They might sell more sets indeed! That tour's not so little. That's very cool. You renting a van and bringing along 'Otto'-like roadies? A teaser video would be an excellent step when you have the time. Time isn't money in our niche of the world, let's face it. ** Zach, Hi, Zach, welcome! Do I know you? Are you the Zach who used to comment here for a while. Are you a new Zach? In any case, thank you and hello and be here as often as your mood inspires you to be please. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I did do the Euro Attractions shebang. It was huge fun. I'm putting together a post of some highlights. Just this massive hall and a second, less massive hall full of people who make/design theme park rides and other related stuff (lighting, transportation, custom mech, custom food, etc.) showing off their latest stuff and schmoozing each other. Totally a feast for the soul. ** Rewritedept, I will re-spin Helium. I always pretty semi- about them. 'Odyssey and Oracle' is a great offbeat cool thing. Good luck in the studio. Yeah, enjoying my short stint at home pretty well, I think. Later. ** Hyrule Dungeon, Hey, man! So awesome to see you! That's a superb development re: you trading your job for concentration on your real, actual work. Exciting, yes! If my body is any indication, I thought my debilitating sleep problems a while back would never end and then one day, boink, I got righted again. Best of luck with that. Horrible thing. It's so true about gore's popularity and go-to status in the 90s. Strange. 'Hellraiser' was like a hipster church back then practically. Very interesting. There could be a fascinating essay written on that topic. Hunh. Man, it would be great if you were around more, naturally, and in, any case, hey! ** Steevee, Hi, Oops. I hope your friend's thing was a 24 hour thing. Flying that far with food poisoning would not be psychedelic in the good way. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. The projects with Zac went really well, thanks, very excitingly. I am pushing the new novel forward. The away time was great for that too, it turned out. Saw your email this morning. Thanks! I'll set that up asap and get back to you asap. ** hyemin, Welcome back, even if briefly. Yes, that DFW book notes page is really great. Thank you! Everyone, if you haven't seen it and are interested, d.l. hyemin has hooked us up with a page that shows the notes David Foster Wallace handwrote in some books he read. If you're a DFW fan, it's very cool, and it's here. Good luck with everything you're working on and doing. ** Sypha, Ah, I see, re: the kidding around, nice. The word on the new Pynchon is so great. I'm very excited to read it. Maybe I'll pick that up today, if it's over here by now. ** Heliotrope, Hi, Mark! Dude, never trust the Dodgers. They'll tornado your heart every season. But it ain't over yet. It never is, and then it is. Halloween is officially in the queue! Big and trustworthy love to you, my pal! ** Okay. I'm off now to the American embassy. My replacement passport -- long story, if you don't remember my passport travails of a few weeks back -- got fucked up in its mail delivery to me, and now I have to go there and hope it's there to be handed to me because I will need it tomorrow. Best of luck to me, and best days to you. See you tomorrow.