Get Lonelier: Dustin vs. Vijay on The Mountain Goats

Dustin: The Mountains Goats make Voxtrot sound like Pantera. They make Matt Pond PA sound like Slayer. They make a flute solo sound like someone throwing a garbage can full of pots and pans down the stairs.

Vijay: The thing is, the Mountain Goats can themselves sound like Pantera. On his last album, The Sunset Tree, John Darnielle (this is one of those deals where one guy is the band) snarls fiery lyrics, practically screaming lines like: "I'm gonna bribe the officials/I'm gonna kill all the judges/it's gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage..." But, unlike The Sunset Tree, which was about his abusive stepfather, this new record is much more subdued. But those lyrics are still there, simple but powerful. They can swing from heartbreaking to hilarious, often within a single line. The imagery, little stories and jokes keep me hanging on every word, and I'm not even a big lyrics guy.

Dustin: Well from what I hear he might get a little rowdier from time to time but even then he just sounds like a male version of Ani. Hey, not everyone needs to rock out but it just boggles my mind how anyone can listen to this dude's nerdy voice dorking its way over these wimpy tunes. Come on man, I don't care how good his lyrics are, this sounds like the guy in your dorm who would sit on his bed playing his guitar with the door open hoping maybe some chick would walk by and be wooed in.

Vijay: Dude! I thought we agreed to no personal attacks! I was that guy in your dorm! But seriously, what can I say? I am literally a wimpy, nerdy dude. This is the music of our kind. The simple acoustic arrangements are just a backdrop to the lyrics, but that has always been the case with folk music — it's no frills. And it's hard to believe that it doesn't matter how good the lyrics are. If you are just immediately assessing the music as not manly enough and not even listening to the words, then you're a Mitchum Man. All i can do is point you in the direction of the Norwegian black metal section while I dork my way over to the sensitive singer-songwriter aisle.

Dustin: Hold your horses there, mopey. Don't try to paint me as some macho metalhead — I'd rather see Jeff Buckley brought back from the dead than Dimebag Darrell. My problem here is that every time some singer songwriter dude drops a "quiet, sensitive" album, he gets compared to Elliott Smith. But Mountain Goats ain't no Elliott Smith. Listen to Jeff Buckley — hell listen to even Kurt Cobain play an acoustic song, it tears your heart out. That's music. With this stuff, I just don't get that.

Vijay:Cobain, Smith and Buckley are (were) genius, no question. Cobain in particular had an uncanny ability to channel raw emotion even while singing something like "it's okay to eat fish because they don't have any feelings." but Darnielle can affect me just as strongly, and often more directly. When he sings about playing arcade games drunk on scotch, punching the machine in frustration and driving home buzzed in the California dusk, dreading his evil stepfather waiting for him at home... I'm there, man. I seriously feel like I'm sitting there drunk in the car with him. It's vivid and cinematic, and I thoroughly enjoy the ride.

Dustin: Okay, well maybe I'll try focusing on the lyrics then. I just can't see myself ever getting past the vocals. It's cool to have some dude telling you a cool story but the voice of the narrator is just as important as the story itself. Imagine if the voice of Darth Vader was Woody Allen instead of James Earl Jones. I don't care how badass his lines are, he'd still sound like a whiny twerp.

Vijay: I can relate. I myself used to enjoy Clap Your Hands Say Yeah until I saw them live. The guy's voice was so shrill and piercing that I literally never listened to the album again. I still cringe if I even think about his godawful warbling. The Geddy Lee syndrome, a.k.a. the "I just can't stand the dude's voice" is a perfectly understandable affliction, and one for which there is no cure...

10,000 Nays: Dustin vs. Rick on Tool

Dustin: I'm a big Tool fan (although not a big tool) but I gotta say I am not feeling the new album.

Rick: Not feeling the new Tool album? Well, you are entitled to your opinion. That's what makes the world go 'round.
Any women in the NYC area who would like to see Tool live, please email a photo of yourself and a short essay explaining why you should get Dustin's ticket to rick@hiphopkaraokenyc.com. The ideal candidate is between 4'7" and 6'5", 80-250 lbs., 17-65 years old, and doesn't hate the new Tool album. And I generally prefer brunettes.

Dustin: As a big hot shot lawyer I would think you'd be more aware of fallacies such as the ones your argument is based on.
Perhaps you are familiar with this fallacy known as The Bandwagon: a fallacy in which a threat of rejection by one's peers (or peer pressure) is substituted for evidence in an "argument." This line of "reasoning" is fallacious because peer pressure and threat of rejection do not constitute evidence for rejecting a claim. Therefore you cannot win an argument by merely threatening to take my ticket away.
This also falls under the Description of Composition fallacy, which is committed when a conclusion is drawn about a whole based on the features of its constituents when, in fact, no justification provided for the inference.
Henceforth, just because I don't like the new album does not mean I do not want to see the band perform live.
Ipso facto, deez nuts.

Rick: Yeah? Well, you're a towel.

Dustin: No, you are.
Really though, the album is boring. I mean, are they so out of ideas that they have to break out a talk box? The last guy I saw do that was the guitarist from Yolk while he was performing in the on-campus pub at Binghamton University, which is now a post office.

Rick: True, but Yolk used to rock that post office. But seriously... your problem cannot be that they use a talk box on one song.
Sure, 10,000 Days isn't Undertow — but what is? It's a great album regardless. Out of ideas? Boring?
Admittedly, the structure of the album is unusual... There are really only six very long, very good songs on the album: "Vicarious," "Jambi," "10,000 Days," "The Pot," "Rosetta Stoned" and "Right in Two." The other tracks are intros or interludes; such as "Intension," which honestly lacks traditional structure (and I admit, is slow), and "Viginti Tres," which simply serves as an outro. Other tracks, such as "Wings for Marie" and "Lost Keys," build into the next track in a way that makes it that much more powerful.
An album doesn't have to be a constant, unrelenting, verse-chorus-verse assault to rock. Perhaps interludes or dynamics within songs that are longer than four minutes are boring if you have the average kid-raised-on-cartoons attention span or if you spend all of your time on a treadmill. If you're looking for something that sounds like Tool but is packaged in neat little bite-sized pop songs, maybe you should try Chevelle... but in my opinion, that's boring.

Dustin: First of all, if you’re going to wait five years to release an album, you better offer up more than six songs. Second, those six songs are all very average and offer nothing new. There’s a formula to them, which I will call the New Tool Sandwich: Start with riff and some singing, insert a few minutes of spacey jamming and kick drums, end with the the same riff and singing. If you want to spice up your New Tool Sandwich you can replace the end singing with shouting for only 59 cents. Sure, at first the sandwich seems fresh, but once you take a few bites you realize it tastes kinda like the meat has been sitting out on the counter a little too long. Understandably, most Tool fans are just really hungry, so they’ll chow down on anything. I personally expect more from such good chefs.

Rick: Your Tool sandwich isn't tasty enough? "It tastes kinda like the meat has been sitting out on the counter a little too long" Are you serious? Want a side of nuts with that?
Weak (and somewhat disturbing) metaphor aside, your complaint seems to boil down to the fact that they write songs with guitar riffs, singing (sometimes screaming), spacey jamming and kick drums — that breaks with the typical formula of pop rock.
Tool breaks with convention to write longer, more interesting, complex songs — that still rock. If the last 40 years of verse-chorus-verse pop songs isn't enough for you, and your attention span is too short to digest anything else, you'll be fine; there's plenty of great stuff out there that clocks in under four minutes and revolves around a single riff and simple hook. I enjoy some single-serving, radio-edit rock as well, but appreciate that there is a band that can create an interesting alternative to the standard formula.
I'm glad Tool is back, and this album marks another stage in their development. No, this isn't Undertow, but there really wouldn't be any point to that. If they bore you by being too complex, long-winded or "meaty," then go listen to something that won't challenge you.

Dustin: See, you're listening to me, but you're not hearing me. Tool USED to write complex and interesting songs. Now they make long jam sessions where they wank off on some riff over and over again only to end up in the same place they started. Hey, I like a nice 400-piece drum kit as much as the next metal head, but who cares if it's being used to create a watered down version of the band's original sound?
This isn't another stage in Tool's development. Nothing new has been added, yet unfortunately, a lot of the emotion seems to have been taken away. When Tool used to play live, they were dark and mysterious. Now Maynard comes on stage wearing a cowboy hat, makes bad puns and dry humps the air while singing Aenima. He's bored, man. They all are, and you can hear it in this album, by far their worst release to date.

Rick: I'm hearing you fine, but your goofy sandwich metaphor didn't exactly get across that the songs are no longer complex and interesting; a point that doesn't make sense — and is simply not true. For example, a song like The Pot is far tighter than Reflection off Lateralus, which is nowhere near as interesting or complex.
And you can't mess with a guy who comes on stage looking like Lt. Col. Kilgore, even if he's grinding the air. Just because you're bored doesn't mean they are.