Fair to say I’m not hating it so far… 43 more free tracks to come, allegedly.

You will be shocked to learn that I really like it.  It has a nice bass groove, great, free roaming guitar, and and gravelly, intense vocals.  It sounds murkier and more bluesy than Modern Times did, in a very good way – the production is very reminiscent on the Daniel Lanois-produced Time Out of Mind.

Executive summary: I like it, but I miss the Good Old Days™.

Right this way if you’d like to read it.

The review is fairly harsh, but I will reserve judgment – the things that are identified as criticisms sound like positives to me.

Update: Ok, the link above seems to be broken but I came across this video to “Alcoholics Unanimous” from the new album too.  I like it, even if it is disturbingly familiar (both the style of the music and the events depicted in the film clip).

In summary, the big labels know that people paying $30/album and $2/track for recorded music is not going to last forever, and have plans in place to deal with that eventuality. Those plans seem to mostly revolve around artists being beholden to the labels not only in terms of copyright in their recordings, but every other aspect of their professional lives too – performance, endorsements, mandatory blood donations, sexual services and so forth.

The really warm and fuzzy part, though, is that they are well aware that they are completely pissing off most of their current users by employing super-aggressive litigation tactics and generally behaving like dickheads.  But the thing is, you see, that

spreadsheets and financial models dictate that suing customers and partners just makes too much sense

I’ve written about the music industry’s war on its customers before. This kind of frank acknowledgement is exactly the kind of “fuck you” that reminds us that these aren’t just bumbling incompetents with no clue what they’re doing, naively floundering in a high tech future they were never ready for – they are ruthless pirhanas determined to cheat, scratch and claw their way to every cent they can get their filthy hands on.  Like a good political organisation, they are able to cover their pure cynicism with a helpful layer of feigned cluelessness.

Even at this very moment they are doing their best to brutally aurally violate Australians even further by charging outrageous amounts for the honour of having terrible music blasted in gyms (one of the many reasons I don’t go to the things).  Apparently $4.54/month PER GYM MEMBER is totally reasonable in exchange for having a shit Rogue Traders song which flagrantly rips off Elvis Costello blasted into your ears while you extreem-yogacize (aside: more on jerks who rip off Elvis Costello’s Pump It Up here).

However, there is an answer.  For you see, at present, we are all filthy, filthy collaborators.  Every artist who signs for a major label; every consumer who pays a cent of money to these people so that they can continue to molest us.  We are, quite literally, funding frivolous lawsuits against ourselves by buying products from major labels.

So, here’s my random five point plan:

• stop buying music if any of your money will go to a major label;
• do support artists like Nine Inch Nails who have chosen to go label free by offering free downloads combined with optional non-free stuff which is actually good and worth owning;
• do support independent labels who do not demonise you in exchange for your custom;
• do go to as much reasonably-priced live music as possible; and
• start paying attention in a political context to the terrible, regressive amendments which are slipped into our copyright laws year after year to enforce these dying monopolies – politicians should care more about what the general public wants than a select group of corporations, yet those corporations have almost 100% of the influence when it comes to lawmaking in this area.

And for $5 per gym member per month, it would be well worth it for most gyms with a few hundred members to hire their own musicians.  You know, real music, performed by humans with talent.  There is certainly no shortage of underemployed musicians going around…

On the whole, the higher end of the scale matches with my personal tastes (Dylan, Ben Folds, Pink Floyd, Radiohead), so I think we can safely conclude that this is 100% accurate and totally scientifically valid.  One thing I did find surprising was that jazz falls somewhere in the lower-middle region of the scale, given that most jazz people seem to me to be highly skilled musicians and often very knowledgable about not only music but many other aspects of culture.  On reflection, though, it occurs to me that my jazz playing/listening friends and acquaintances tend to struggle in structured environments (e.g. the final year of high school) and also tend to vigorously pursue, er, alternative studies, such as the study of drug and alcohol abuse through first hand experience, to perfect their art.

“Books that Make You Dumb” is also interesting, although it lacks the pretty coloured graphs of the musical variant.  Dan Brown and The Holy Bible both appear at the end of the spectrum you would expect, although I was very surprised to see “The Alchemist” in the top 10, a novel I found trite, preachy and simplistic in every respect.

I have often argued that as arguably the most significant living musician, Dylan somehow owes it to himself and the rest of us to keep cranking out records while he still can.  It makes me think of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes:

Ever notice how the older people get, the slower they do things? I wonder why that is. I would think that the less life you had left, the faster you’d want to do everything, so you could pack more into the remaining years. You can bet when I’m a geezer like Dad, I’ll be going like a maniac.

Bob seems to have taken Calvin’s philosophy on board of late – as well as releasing his memoirs, a massive triple CD of mostly unreleased studio material, hosting a weekly radio show and touring relentlessly, it has now emerged that he has a new album set for release this year.  Rolling Stone, who have somehow heard the album (bastards), tell us:

The disc has the live-in-the-studio feel of Dylan’s last two studio records, 2001’s Love and Theft and 2006’s Modern Times, but with a seductive border-cafe feel (courtesy of the accordion on every track) and an emphasis on struggling-love songs. The effect — in the opening shuffle, “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’,” the Texas-dancehall jump of “If You Ever Go to Houston” and the waltz “This Dream of You” — is a gnarly turn on early-1970s records like New Morning and Planet Waves.

Sounds fantastic (well, the New Morning part, not so sure about Planet Waves myself).

* or anyone, for that matter

Some of my Neil Young shots (click for bigger versions):