Quick Hits, Vol. 283 (The Marfa Tapes, Manchester Orchestra, Royal Blood, Weezer)

After polishing off the ACL stuff, I went back and checked out my drafts to see what I had been working on and left unfinished to hammer through all those bands.  One very old post was my ruminations on what "middle class" is in America right now.  It looks like I read this article and then decided I needed to think through what that meant.

"According to this data, the middle class in Travis County makes between $37,000 and $124,000.  I don't see how someone making $37,000 a year can be considered in the middle class, or how they would consider themselves in the middle class in Travis County. 

• After taxes that should net this person about $30,000 a year (after Federal income taxes, Medicare, and Social Security are all deducted).  That would get this person about $2,500 a month.
• I agree with the article that home ownership is expected in the middle class.  A median home price in Travis County is $395,000, which at today's mortgage rate and a 30 year note, is $1,868 a month.  (down to $632)
• Say they forgo cable and internet, and just go with basic utilities.  This website says that should average around $145 a month for a 900 square foot apartment.  A house should cost more (Lord knows mine does) but lets stick with that number. (down to $487)
• The lender on that home is going to require insurance, which is a difficult thing to get a good average for, but let's be conservative and say $100 a month. (down to $387)
• You can try to claim that they won't have a cell phone plan, but everyone has at least a basic plan.  $25.  ($362 left)
• You still have food (definitely more than $350 in my house per month), transportation (car payment, gas, maintenance), health insurance or out-of-pocket healthcare costs, and any sort of entertainment. "

And that was before the home prices have gone through the roof recently.  Now, that $2,500 a month would be long gone to just pay for housing.  Anyway, to sum up my thoughts from five years ago, $37k ain't middle class in Austin, Texas.  On to the music!

Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert, Jon Randall - The Marfa Tapes.  Delightfully messy little batch of songs from these guys.  I don't listen to much Lambert, haven't heard from Ingram in years, and have never heard of Randall at all, but some of these songs are really great.  But they're deliberately raw - there are random background noises, and Lambert giggles in the midst of songs pretty frequently - and the recording sounds like it was done in a barn using an old jam box for the mic.  Which is kinda fun - feels like I'm listening in on these folks having an old time song swap.  Just one acoustic guitar, and some nice harmonies, lets you really listen to the lyrics.  The top track is the opener, "In His Arms."

I gotta say, watching that video made the song even better - beautiful.  Randomly just got emotional watching that.  What the hell.  But yeah, a lovely little song and sentiment.  I like it.  "Two Step Down to Texas" sounds very much like they brought in Kelly Willis to sing.  I really like Randall's sound - he reminds me of David Wilcox on How Did You Find Me Here (see "Breaking a Heart" or "Amazing Grace - West Texas").  "Geraldine" is weird, because it is a "Jolene" ripoff, but it goes so far as to name-check "Jolene," so it's a knowing ripoff, which seems off-putting to me.  But overall, this is a really fun album.  Makes me want to go to deep west Texas and play the three chords I can play over and over.

Looks like they made a movie to go with the album, here's the trailer:

Manchester Orchestra - The Million Masks of God.  These guys were at ACL a few years ago and I liked their music and the live show.  Actually, I loved their live show.  They bring a ton of energy and earnestness to the stage.  You can hear that earnestness in this album - its the kind of stuff that starts with a whisper and then fills the entire atmosphere.  Hell, just the title of the album is pretty damn earnest and arena-sized.  But I really like the combination here of the singer's tenderness in his vocals, added to the frequently bombastic music behind him.  "Bedhead" is the hit so far, I've been hearing it on the local Sun radio station a few times, but I'm going to give you number 2 in streams - "Keel Timing" with 951k streams (now up to 1.9 million 6 months later, I wrote this entry prior to the ACL lineup being released).

The driving start is so nice when it rolls into his whispered start, and then the whole thing just builds until it spills out into a jam.  Because I've been working on the ACL bands for so long, this album has had a long time to percolate.  I really like it.

Royal Blood - Typhoons.  These guys have been a favorite ever since they came to ACL a few years ago as well - their 2014 eponymous album is a crushingly powerful rock hammer.  And confusingly, seeing their live show, it was just two guys, singer/bassist and drummer.  They sound like a full band.  But the bassist uses pedals and effects and his skillz to make the bass guitar sound like there could be a guitarist involved as well.  I find it fascinating.  Anyway, this album is not as good as their earlier two - they leave some of the spare, DIY-sounding skuzz and add in drum machines and backing choirs and get a little more disco-glammy.  The title track, in which I thought they were singing something about being freeeeeeeee, when really they were saying the word typhoon, is a prime example.  It's still catchy and funky, but it just feels more polished and pop-headed.  The top track on the disc is the first one (which of course I surmise is the top streamer because people tried it out, realized this was not the classic RB sound, and quit listening.  But maybe not.).  "Trouble's Coming" has 33.3 million streams, while "Typhoons" has 19.2 million and only one other cracks 8 figures - "Boilermaker" with just over 10 million.  Here's that first one.

I like in the video getting to watch him play the bass like that.  More radical bassists in the world, please.  I think the annoying thing is that I actually still like this too.  I want to reject that new shine on the tracks, but I still find myself grooving to the poppy disco-fied funk and wishing I could jump around to this at a live show again.  Yeah, I still like the album.  Dangit.

Weezer - Van Weezer.  Ah, Weezer.  I still like them, even as they continue churning out relatively forgetful, even though weird, experimentations.  I know they love Kiss and other hair rock stuff - Rivers shouted out Kiss on the Blue Album a million years ago - but this feels like a fun experiment they thought they'd throw out regardless of how half baked these rockers sound.  The first track - "Hero" - is a shoutout to classic comic book heroes, complete with over-the-top guitar solos.  Actually, when I just thought about it as I listened, this seems a lot like what White Reaper is doing right now, but because I know the history of Weezer, I like this less than I do when I see it on the White Reaper folks.  I'll easily say that this is better than the Teal Album or the even worse OK Human.  It's just straight bubblegum "hard" rock action full of all the bombast and cheese that can be wrung out of finger-blasting a fretboard.  The playcount shows that most folks were not on board, with the opening track getting 12 million streams, the third song getting 13 million, and the back half of the album mostly under a million.  The top one is "The End of the Game," which for some reason makes me think it should be the title track of the second Ready Player One.

What.  That little fake-ass ET guy is gross.  But the poppy fun of the song comes through even if I'm finding this cheesy.  Yeah, the disc is definitely better than their last couple, but it still feels like a schtick that I wish they would abandon in favor of making something that isn't quite so campy.