Some folks think if you've heard one Hella album you've heard them all, but they're overlooking the intricate subtleties that make the band such a monster. The one constant, though, is its insanely complex approach — of all the bands ever labeled "math rock," Hella is the only one that honestly seems to rise to the term.
It’s Sunday afternoon, the third and final day of Pickathon 2011, and I’m staring at the old dancing hippie with the outie bellybutton. His rubbery skin, his shockingly lithe movements, his manicured white beard – it’s terrifying but weirdly alluring and I can’t look away.
It’s Sunday night and I’m overhearing a Pendarvis Farm resident explain to a performer what it’s like after the festival, when the crowds disperse and the music stops. Earnestly, he compares it to post-partum depression. “There are like 5,000 people here,” he says. “Then, all of the sudden, there are five.”
It’s Thursday, the day before the festival, and I’m pondering what Pickathon might be like. Perhaps unfairly, I’ve already stereotyped. (Hordes of dancing hippies, I imagine.) The folkish, rootsy lineup looks great, but it’s packaged with some red-flag buzz words (“Camping, hiking and a sustainability ethic”) that suggest a faint bouquet of moral superiority, that weird, cringeworthy mix of egoist libertarianism and mobbish progressivism that runs off the slopes of Mt. Hood and snakes its way into Portland’s water supply. But I will try to keep an open mind.
When Watch the Throne, Jay-Z and Kanye West's long-awaited studio alliance, finally hits brick-and-mortar stores on August 12, it will be the culmination of months of hype. If early hints are to be believed, it will also be the latest in a strange and storied line of artistically deficient unions between superstars — the collaboration, that musical equivalent of the Hollywood vanity project. Indeed, leaked tracks seem inconsonant with Throne's lengthy gestation period: "Otis," a slice of greasy ham featuring hyperactive but feeble performances from both Jay and Ye, is both hero- and self-worship, all the lifeblood sadistically drained out of the Otis Redding sample that provides the muddled basis for the track.
