McNutt Against the Music (EP)

Quick thoughts, observations and Interweb discoveries from Ryan McNutt—musicology student, freelance music journalist and PR practitioner based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. For more thoughts, check out the long-player version of McNutt Against the Music.

[ryanmcnutt]

Wrote a couple things about this guy.

“The Next Day: On David Bowie’s enduring legacy and influence on Canadian music” (The Walrus)

“How David Bowie’s legacy will inspire new generations of listeners” (Chart Attack)

[lestateur]

[bootyschool-deactivated20160401]

New year, who dis

[ryanmcnutt]

[ryanmcnutt]

Born to Run turns 40

Born to Run is perhaps Springsteen's most famous album, but probably not his best; his strongest material would come when he began to poke holes in his own romantic mythology, emphasizing the dark edges that drive people to fast cars, fast love and the night's potential. But first he had to craft that mythology, and Born to Run is its delirious apex, a pastiche of rock and street iconography smashed into a "Wall of Sound" so powerful that even the E Street Band's incredible live performances struggle to match it.

Its side opening/closing songs ("Thunder Road," "Backstreets," the title track and "Jungleland") are classics that are hard to listen to with fresh ears, but if you try you can hear a hunger for greatness that in lesser hands would sound needy and desperate. But few artists in popular music's history have been as skilled at turning desperation into impassioned hyper-drama as Springsteen: through the force of his performances and his economic attention to detail, he takes well-known images and thinly-sketched characters and focuses their stories in on their most visceral moments, when the choice between fight and flight is at its most immediate.

The few moments when Born to Run slows its pace — the intro to "Backstreets," the palette-cleansing "Meeting Across the River," the swooning, iconic "Jungleland" saxophone solo — are tinged with sadness without being explicit about it, with the effect of making the album's escapist anthems feel essential, necessary. If you stop and think about it for a moment, there's no reason believe that any of these characters will succeed in their quest to "get out while we're young," but Born to Run isn't an album about that. (Those records would come later). It's about that hyperbolic moment when romance and opportunity collide and suddenly anything seems possible.

"Show a little faith," Springsteen sings, "there's magic in the night." His songwriting would gain heft and nuance in the years following Born to Run, but it would never be quite so exhilarating.

[ryanmcnutt]

Jon Stewart's legacy is not without its complications and, certainly, I haven't watched The Daily Show as regularly the past five years or so, something I suspect is the case with a lot of people.

But that’s partly because of how inseparable The Daily Show felt from the 21st century's first decade, when for many of us it played less like a television show and more like a necessary supplemental text. You had a presidential administration that was particularly adept and/or cynical at leveraging a splintering political consciousness to achieve its aims; the rise of a reshaped American conservatism more outwardly honest about its anti-intellectualism (and, tied with the former point, a leadership more willing to embrace it for its own ends); and a corporate media environment in which the fourth estate's critical voice felt increasingly dulled, particularly in the wake of post-9/11 patriotism.

That a popular deconstructionist of some sort would emerge against this backdrop was almost inevitable. That it was a comedian seems noteworthy, even when you consider America's long and storied history of satire and political humour. Stewart has always been too quick to dismiss his political influence, ready to fly the "I'm just a jokes man!" flag the moment someone tries to suggest his importance. But at a time in which the presiding political tone in America was an almost apoplectic seriousness on all fronts, it makes sense that so many of us were drawn to a man (and his team of writers and future comedy superstars) telling us that our political and media culture deserved to be laughed at a good chunk of the time.

I've often wondered whether Stewart's politics (spoiler alert: I'm pretty sure he votes Democrat) limited the potential reach of his work. But the more I think about it, the more I feel his politics actually were what made the Daily Show palatable. I love a lot of what John Oliver is doing on Last Week Tonight (particularly, the long-form segments less tied to current news), and he's far from apolitical himself, but his strategy of buttressing his oft-depressing analysis with cheap jokes and hashtags sometimes leaves me cold. Stewart, in contrast, always left me with a sense that things could actually get better — and I'm not sure he could have done that without his politics being so obvious in the material.

The reason you'll see a lot of "we'll never see the likes of him again" comments about Stewart this week is because he was decidedly a product of his time. Though that time has come and gone, many of its issues remain, and like a lot of people, I'm going to miss having Jon Stewart around to help me sort through them and find a few good laughs along the way.

[ryanmcnutt]

A few of my photos from Tayor Swift’s #1989TourChicago last night.

[ryanmcnutt]

Seeing Spoon in Portland was great. Seeing Spoon crash a Spoon cover band’s after party and then taking the stage to perform two more songs in front of, like, 25 people? Maybe even better. 

[ryanmcnutt]

He thought a gig with the War Boys was his one-way ticket to rock Valhalla. But instead of his own "Thunder Road," all he found was Fury.

[ryanmcnutt]

Everyone’s clearly rushing their NHL playoffs preview proofreading. (From two different Canadian sports news sites today)

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[amajor7-deactivated20210823]

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YES THIS

[tedtheodorelogan]

[ryanmcnutt]

Arcade Fire's debut album, Funeral, turns 10 today (Sept. 14). It's still something special. Here's what I wrote about the record when I named it my top album of the 2000s.

Why Funeral?

In some ways, I suppose that’s an obvious question: we are talking about one of the most beloved records of the decade by any measure, a tour-de-force phenomenon that’s undeniable even if it wasn’t your personal cup of tea. But even as someone whose shameless activism for this record and this band has been well documented, this wasn’t easy. As long as I’ve been thinking about this list – a good year or two, at the very least – my top three slots have been reserved for these top three records; nothing else was really ever in contention. But how to order these records, each near and dear to me, was probably more agonizing than these sorts of silly lists should ever be.

At one point, Kid A was in the top spot, but I struggled with whether it truly spoke to the decade or if it was an outlier – the last great event album (spoiler alert from 2014: it wasn't), one final brilliant relic of an era forever changed by the digital age. At one point, it was Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and its shattered Americana at number one, but I wondered it if was an artifact made modern through deconstruction instead of something truly modern. However, how “modern” really is Funeral – a record that owes great debts to its all-too-obvious influences, from David Bowie and U2 to the Talking Heads?

But I’m not sure if Funeral could have happened in any other decade. It’s a record whose success spoke better than any other to the turning of the tides, the collapse of the traditional industry paradigm giving way to the exciting and terrifying post-digital world. Funeral’s glorious choruses and fist-pounding passions demanded more than just devotion: they demanded action. The moment the final notes of “In the Backseat” faded out for the first time, I started telling people about this amazing new band, and it’s clear I wasn’t alone in that reaction. It was as if we all realized, at the same time, that the only way this record was going to get heard is if we shared the word: writing on websites, ranting on blogs, shouting across dinner tables, cranked loud at parties, illegally spreading the songs like viruses across file-sharing networks.

I don’t come from a religious background, so Funeral may have been the first time I truly understood evangelical movements. As the weeks and months went by, I never passed up the opportunity to tell anyone and everyone about Funeral. I have friends who can vividly recall exact conversations where I – equal parts impassioned and intoxicated – ranted and raved about this new record that they had to drop everything and download. It had nothing to do with increasing the record’s sales or the band’s following. I simply wanted everyone I cared about to feel the way I did when I listened to the record. And if I didn’t give them that opportunity, who would?

We may be the last generation to remember the music world as it was before the great collapse; now we spend our days trying to organize the deluge left behind. The television spits static. The radio buzzes with a tragic hiss. The windows of the record store are boarded up, spray paint written on the door. “The power’s out in the heart of man / take it from your heart, put it in your hand.”

We are all evangelists now. And Funeral is our first great hymn.

[giphy]

[muffbluff]

oh mannn

[paskettiwestern]

Here’s a close-up look at a few of the VHS covers I created for the Last Exit To Springfield show at The Dart Gallery. Tomorrow is the last day to check out the show, so see it if you can—there are all kinds of amazing pieces by some of the most talented creative folks in the city!