the musical fruit: movement #20.

the musical fruit: movement #20.
song: "fireworks," animal collective
fruit: strawberries

if i was to name the one indie band who i've yet to see live but most long to see, it's animal collective. they're a band made up of four dudes (avey tare, panda bear, geologist & occasionally deakin) known for their psychedelically-happy songs & supposedly energetically trippy live shows. a typical song revolves around a repetitive beat that, once countless layers of instruments & vocals & sounds are added, becomes part of a bouncy anthem that you can't help but sing or shout along with. they tend to either go that route or just get all wacky psychedelic. they're originally from baltimore & even though (based on what i've seen on the wire) baltimore's pretty fucked up, with acts like them, ponytail & dan deacon, it produces some pretty solid indie acts.

for the last few years, my favorite animal collective song has been "fireworks," off of their 7th studio album, strawberry jam. the album itself is full their typical trippy stuff, but for me, it was the first time they came through with an album i found more appealing than annoying. "fireworks" appears midway through, right after the six & a half minute "for reverend green" & at almost seven minutes, is the longest song on the album. it doesn't feel long though, because it's always building & changing & bouncy. the lyrics are a bit nonsensical, but there are mentions of "eating with a good friend" & frightened babies pooing. you can't beat either of those things. if you like watching fireworks, you can't beat the video either. sparkly!

my strawberries are much better looking than the ones on the front of the album. those ones are SMASHED & smashed BUT GOOD. mine were fresh & red & almost 100% bruise-free. to be honest, they looked so good i almost didn't want to eat them. so yeah, i like strawberries a lot, might even call them a top five fruit. they're not without their drawbacks though. for starters, unless you're picking them from your own personal strawberry patch, they ain't cheap. to make matters worse, a lot of the time, after you've shelled out your hard-earned cash for a basket of fresh, store-bought strawberries, the fuckers end up rotting before you have a chance to eat them all. you have to move quick with the strawberries.

if you get them while they're still nice & fresh, they're so friggin good. i sat there for an hour the other day with a big bowl of strawberries & one by one, grabbed them by the stems & went to town, tossing the lousy stems over my shoulder into the trash as i ate. i was totally in the zone. in the interest of full disclosure, i must note that like apples & pears, strawberries are actually a fruit imposter, a "false fruit" if you will, since the fruit doesn't come from ovaries. it's cool with me. i don't need ovaries to make my fruit taste better. speaking of ovaries, i could get into the slang connotations of the word strawberry, but i won't. n.w.a. & urban dictionary have already covered that territory just fine.

the musical fruit: movement #15.

the musical fruit: movement #15.
song: "date with IKEA," pavement
fruit: dates

the indie rock world sure has had their fair share of respectable reunions over the past decade. with the pixies & my bloody valentine & the jesus lizard & slint & mission of burma & polvo reunions out of the way, indie rock scientists turned their attention to one of the most hoped for ones over the past few years--pavement--who dissolved back in '99 after years of rocky relations between band members. last week, the indie rock nerds got their wish, as pavement announced that they'd be playing a gig in central park an entire year from now. that show sold out in two minutes & they ended up announcing three more shows, two of which have already sold out. in their time together, they put out five full-lengths & for the most part they were all damn solid, although i prefer the first three over the last two. i want to be excited about the reunion, but have been so indifferent to lead singer steve malkmus' solo albums that i suppose it sort of brought my love of pavement down a notch. i'm working on that.

their fourth album, brighten the corners, is probably my least favorite of theirs (wowee zowee's #1), but "date with IKEA" (the fourth song off of it) is up there as one of my favorite pavement songs. it was one of two songs on the album that were written by guitarist scott kannberg, the only two on the album not written by malkmus. it's a quick two-and-a-half minute rocker with slightly nonsensical lyrics & a nice quick solo, all attributes that make me love their first three albums so much. i guess other people felt the same love for the song because when matador records re-released brighten the corners at the end of last year as brighten the corners: nicene creedence edition, they ran a contest where one lucky fan won a $500 shopping spree at the red hook IKEA with pavement's jack-of-all-trades bob nastanovich. the girl who won won because all she had was a suitcase & an air mattress. i guess she deserved it.

i've got a date with dates tonight. in fact, i've been having a lot of dates with the dates recently. sure, i bring along cracker & apple & sweet sweet goat cheese most of the time, but the important thing is that we've been spending a lot of time together these days. i even spent some time this afternoon all alone with dates, just the two of us at my desk working hard at making sugary sweet tweens happy through the magic of sugary sweet pop. these particular dates came from brooklyn's terrafina foods. ever since i first picked some up early last month (btw, i still haven't got a human date from that post, ladies) along with goat cheese & crackers, they've become a fixture in my kitchen. it blows my mind that they're a fruit but they're so darn sugary. i LOVE sugar.

as far as dates go, i LOVE them, but i don't LOVE THEM LOVE them. a man can't live on sugar alone. i mean, we have some really great times together & i don't want to sound like i can't be a monogamist or something, but things are better when it's me, dates & some goat cheese. i have trouble being exclusive with dates. i love them & all, but they're just better when i spread cheese on them. there. i said it. i like my dates more if they have goat cheese on them. it's public record now & they're just going to have to accept the fact that they have to work together with goat cheese for my pleasure...& why shouldn't they? just look at how well it worked out for french fry & ranch dressing.

the musical fruit: movement #14.

the musical fruit: movement #14.
song: "the pineapple vs the watermelon," xiu xiu
fruit: watermelon

since i've moved to nyc & fallen in love with the indie rock, i've come across a lot of hyped stuff & a lot of weird stuff. i'm well versed in pitchfork & it's through them that i discovered xiu xiu, the slightly spooky project of oakland's jamie stewart & a bunch of other peeps. it was around the release of their 2004 album fabulous muscles that i fell for them. the album is made up of equal parts poignant, whispered lyrics & acoustic guitar and unexpected, jagged, clanging sounds with some occasional rocking thrown in for good measure. the title song features the lyrics, "cremate me after i come on your lips. honey boy place my ashes in a vase beneath your workout bench." i found it awkward & creepy, but still fell hard for it, so hard that i made sure to write a piece about them for ny press' music section during my time there. as adam (my friend & co-worker at the time) often joked, "these guys are art rock, huh?"

their 2006 album, the air force, features a song called "the pineapple vs the watermelon." i'm not sure what the hell the title's all about. the song's actually about suicide & there's no mention of fruit at all in the lyrics. just some stuff about "someone felt something pure and told it all to you. that was why you killed yourself. to prove it wasn't true. say hello to cory's mom. say hello to freddy's mom. say hello to ryan's mom." it's typical dark-ass xiu xiu. the song begins with the aforementioned soft guitar & hushed lyrics & throughout, there are little bells & wood blocks & noises, but no frantically jarring stuff. i still like the jarring stuff, but the non-jarring stuff sticks with me more, for obvious reasons. this one in particular really grabs me.

i wasn't feeling ambitious or hungry enough to get both a pineapple and a watermelon. pineapples are too much work & i wasn't up for lugging a whole watermelon home on the bus. i'd just end up smashing it like some sort of accidental, less-comedic gallagher anyhow. maybe if it was one of those awesome square watermelons or heart-shaped ones that the japanese developed & i had a lot of yen to blow, i'd put forth the effort. instead, i opted for some watermelon & picked up a three pack of pre-sliced wedges from the supermarket, allowing me to eat watermelon at my leisure. shit, i'll probably even save one for breakfast tomorrow. it's a laid back life i lead, folks.

here's my take on the watermelon. i'm not cool with the seeds. never have been. for a little while when i was a little kid, it was cool to have multiple opportunities to spit things, but now they're just annoying & make me self-conscious. thank god that japanese science created a seedless one too. when it really boils down to it though, i'm cool with watermelon. it can get a little messy with its water & whatnot (see previous comments re: self-consciousness), but it's so subtly sweet & summertime fun refreshing that i'm all like, "toss some chunks of it my fruit salad, please." "if you don't mind kind nj lab technician sir, please inject this square of hubba bubba with a facsimile of watermelon flavor & when you're done, can you do something for the smell of my shampoo? that would be most delightful. thanks, science."

the musical fruit: movement #7.

the musical fruit: movement #7.
song: "bowl of oranges," bright eyes
fruit: mineola orange



i used to really like bright eyes. like a lot. during the first few years after i first moved to nyc back in 2001, i must have gone to at least a half dozen bright eyes shows. i even drove over an hour to cat's cradle in carrboro, nc to see bright eyes whilst on a business trip. i've always been super intrigued by artists who, while still in their teens, have accomplished more artistically than i have in my entire lifetime & conor oberst, the mastermind behind bright eyes, definitely fit that description. by the time he was 21, he'd already put out three albums & an EP under the name bright eyes, two of which (letting off the happiness & fevers & mirrors) i had in heavy rotation for a good two years after discovering him. they were organic sounding albums clearly written by a teenager but filled with oberst's quivering voice spouting forth detailed stories of angst & heartbreak & self-reflection.

then in 2002, when i was at the height of my obsession, the fourth full length, lifted or the story is in the soil, keep your ear to the ground came out & became the first bright eyes album to get serious national attention, with late night tv appearances & whatnot...their "breakthrough" album if you will. it features some of my favorite all time lyrics, lines like "abc, nbc, cbs, bullshit. they give us fact or fiction? i guess an even split" that tiptoe between profound & pretentious. still today, i can put the album on, get sucked in & not realize it until i find myself coming out the other end seventy-three minutes later. about a third of the way in, there's "bowl of oranges," a piano-tinged song that acts as a short, slightly happy buffer between the beginning of the album & the epic "don't know when but a day is gonna come." it delves in familiar territory for a bright eyes song, telling a vague story about being alone through lyrics like "and we'll keep working on the problem we know we'll never solve of love's uneven remainders, our lives are fractions of a whole." totally deep, man.

in honor of the song, i'm having myself a lil bit of citrus today with a mineola orange i picked up at the produce market a couple blocks from my apartment. it's a tiny place (with tiny aisles) that's run by an old korean couple. the dude seems to be perpetually sitting outside arranging the produce. the lady loves me & every time i go in, as she's ringing up my haul, she makes sure to comment on how little i'm paying for the amount of produce i'm getting. she's all "red pepper, green pepper, yellow pepper, snow peas, onions, portobello, shitake...you're eating good tonight, huh?" then i tell her that i have marinated tofu at home to go with all of it & i totally blow her mind. she points out my total on the register & we smile at each other. it's our semiweekly bonding moment. yay neighborhood businesses.

as for the mineola, it's a cross between a grapefruit & a tangerine, similar to a tangelo. according to the wikipedia, the mineola was released in 1931 by the USDA horticultural research station. my fruit was created in a lab! go frankenfruit! as is characteristic of the mineola, it didn't have any seeds in it, but it did have a couple unidentifiable, random lil nubbins hiding out inside of it. as the picture above shows, it also has that characteristic nipple on the top of it. as far as nipples go, it's one of the least exciting nipples i've come across in recent times. on the upside, it's definitely juicier than your typical orange. when i was cutting it up into slices, i ended up with juice flowing off of the cutting board like blood from a freshly shivved prisoner out in the yard. don't worry. i didn't lose any of that juice. since there was nobody around, i lapped & slurped that juice up like some sort of vitamin-c loving dog. mmm...saved citrus cutting board juice.

the musical fruit: movement #5.

the musical fruit: movement #5.
song: "bankrupt on selling," fresh cherries from yakima
fruit: cherries



about a half decade back, when i was playing a lot more guitar, for as much joy as i got out of writing my own songs, i would also sit around for hours on end learning & playing covers of my favorite songs. these days, the few times when i pick up my guitar, it's usually to figure out how to play some song that randomly comes up in the itunes shuffle & grabs me by the scruff. my skillz are slower these days, but a half decade back, i was playing a good amount & my skillz had reached an acceptable level of quality. at the same time, i was all into lo-fi music, so it was fine if my playing or recordings sounded flawed or blatantly home recorded.

sometime around then, i came across this dude who goes by the name fresh cherries from yakima. he's from washington & i first came across him because of a cover he did of wolf parade's "you are a runner & i am my father's son." back then, i thought his stuff was brilliant. my favorite was (& probably still is) his cover of modest mouse's "bankrupt on selling," which, after hearing, i immediately tried to learn how to play. it's one of those songs you can play as slow & sad as you want & in as much isaac brock voice as you prefer & it still sounds good. mr cherry's done covers of the decemberists' "eli the barrow boy," wilco's "jesus, etc," neutral milk hotel's "communist daughter," "linger" by the cranberries...a bunch of stuff i've totally tried to play at some point or another. in fact, there's a whole library's worth of his potentially unlistenable covers & originals on his website, a number of which i've tried to learn. as for my reaction upon hearing his music again for the first time in a few years...not as fresh as i remembered it being back in the day..."specific time in my life" sort of stuff, i suppose.

earlier this week, as i went back & rediscovered fresh cherries from yakima, i did so under the influence of a shit ton of cherries. cherries are pretty much the best fruit alive these days. cherries--you may remember them from last month's tropical thunder & cherries related post. that means you get two photos of two different angles of a bowl of cherries for your money here at eat!drink!snack! this time, i learned from my mistakes & made sure to consume them over the course of 48 hrs (the unit of time, not the eddie murphy/nick nolte gem). another 48 hrs [insert rimshot here] & those cherries would've been as gross as a monkey with a self-deprecating attitude.

but i didn't wait for that to happen. you see that bowl up there? something like twenty/twenty-five cherries in it? i can not tell a lie. that was half a package & before i'd even had a chance to finish listening to four songs by FCFY, the cherries were reduced to a sorry bowl of pits & stems. ooh! let me drop some science on you. cherry trees take somewhere in the range of five years to grow & produce crop after first being planted. that's a half decade & that's the same amount of time since i first discovered fresh cherries from yakima! whoa!

and...theme.