Hatchet reporter Joel Goldberg shares his latest music obsessions.
My Morning Jacket: “Off the Record”
“Sorry about the things that I had to say,” Jim James, guitarist and lead singer of My Morning Jacket, pleads to begin “Off the Record.” As part of his desperate apology, he tells the song’s mysterious subject, “I know you don’t need the confusion.” Once a wailing guitar duel between James and lead guitarist Carl Broemel subsides, the second half of “Off the Record” becomes a confusion of hollow, ominous notes and garbled voices. “You’ve got to want to rearrange it,” the chorus implores, “Keep it off the record.”
Champions of the psy-trance scene, Infected Mushroom seek to do more than hype up youths to go ballistic. First, however, “Sa’eed” steers the listener through a maze of thrashing drums and heavy metal riffs reminiscent of a Mortal Kombat movie. “I hope I can kill and stay the same,” cries lead singer Amit Duvdevani as the drama unfurls. Eventually, through delicate piano strokes, Erez Eisen clears a path home. Duvdevani and Erez, the Israeli-born founders of the internationally renowned band, are known to build crowds into a frenzy with visually spectacular performances. With “Sa’eed,” they prove they can illuminate difficult subjects without the aid of laser light shows.
Senior year of high school, my AP Environmental Science teacher loved to plug in a boom box during labs. STS9 blared in the background while we, his students, examined the properties of bacteria-ridden dirt. The music was a bit odd—as was the teacher—but I took an instant liking to its intricate instrumentation and cosmic mood. My classmate and friend burned me a CD copy of STS9’s album, “Artifact,” including the stellar trance of its track “Tokyo.” In stressful times, the song’s muted hand drums and extraterrestrial effects have whisked me off to heavenly soundscapes on faraway worlds. With finals on the horizon, “Tokyo” will unearth such chi.
