All Zombies are Wasted

The Japandroids - Celebration Rock - a review of

The follow up to the excellent Post Nothing came out this week, or last, or next, I’m not sure.  My pre-order let me download it last week, and my LP showed up this week.  Regardless, it’s available.  On to the review…

Out of the gate, “The Nights of Wine and Roses”, gives you that warm feeling that your favorite band is still your favorite band, and hasn’t abandoned their sound in favor of a slicker, popier sound.  But 54 seconds into the record the sound explodes, and a larger than before Japandroids emerge.  It’s welcomed.  The sound has broadened, but it’s still rooted in what it has been: energetic songs with raw guitars, frantic drumming, unmistakable vocal cadences, and sing along backing vocals that make you swell.

Celebration Rock continues on with Post-Nothing’s long song structures (by punk rock standards), that somehow never tire.  It’s intro -> verse -> chorus -> verse -> chorus -> bridge -> outro, and everything is played twice as long as you’d expect, and you’re happy for it every time.  

The misstep on the record is “for the love of ivy” which feels thrown together, and contrived.  Buried as the middle fourth track on the record, it gives them plenty of time to recover.  The remainder of the record is strong especially with the previously released tracks “Younger Us”, and “The House that Heaven Built”.  Both stand outs on a strong record.  

The bigger sound, and occasional overdubbed 2nd guitars certainly opens itself up for more commercial appeal, but it’s welcome, and feels natural.  As always, it’s the unique vocal cadences and melodies that set the Japandroids apart from everyone else.  It’s their in-your-face secret weapon, and it works every time.  

The Black Black - Released

At the risk of being called out for shameless self promotion, The Black Black (my band) just released their new record, “Music to Sell Drinks To”.  And, I’m very pleased with the results.

We let it go last week, and are giving it away for free online until tomorrow.  Go check it out, download it, like us on facebook, tweet about it, and call your friends and continually bring it up for no reason.

http://www.theblackblack.com

2-Songs From the Evens (a biased review)

I can’t say I was very hopeful that I would be hearing anything from Evens at the start of this year.  It had been almost 5 years since their last release (the 2006 Get Evens).  To my surprise, they played Fort Reno this summer, and I made the bus trip down to see them.  

I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect.  Amy and Ian are raising a young family, and for good reason, it seemed that their priorities had shifted from the band.  But they were spot on at Fort Reno.  They were tight, energetic, and Ian as always, was Ian.  They also had new songs.

Warble Factory, the A side of 2-Songs, has what you come to expect as the Evens’ sound.  Ian’s baritone guitar, along with Amy’s drumming are unmistakable.  But Warble Factory is not a return to status quo for Evens.  The song’s primary riff, is more riffy, and more catchy than much of their past work.  The song structure while more complex, relies heavily on its shout-able chorus.  And by the end of the song, it is feeling much fuller than the often scaled back sound of Evens in the past.  B-Side Timothy Wright is a bit more down tempo, but finishes strong, and is a good complement to Warble.

In addition to the single, it was announced that there will be a new Evens LP in 2012.  Unsurprisingly, this is welcome news.

Music to Code To

Here’s an unordered list of 4 artists to spend the day/night coding to.

-  LCD Soundsystem - the perfect blend of dance/pop/rock that keeps you moving and focused.

-  Built To Spill - wonderfully textured indy rock that you can easily get lost in.  It also provides a nice consistent pace, that keeps you moving.  And, when you do start to lose focus, it’s intricate enough to hold your mind without requiring a windy web surfing session.

-  Radiohead - the repeating acoustic/electro rhythms provide a nice trance, as does the meandering of much of yorke’s vocals.  But it’s always interesting, and keeps your mind from straying too far when you get caught in the code weeds.

-  Zero Zero - the unknown on the list (but it’s not just in for street cred).  Zero Zero is a beautifully understated electro dance pop. It’s rhythms will pump you up, but it’s polite melodies won’t drown out your thought. Perfect when you are tired. (Unfortunately they only ever put out one record (2001’s AM Gold))

Shellac :: Live at the Bell House 10/04/2011

The fact that Shellac hardly tours, and has only put out 4 records in 19 years, may make you think that they don’t really give a shit.  Wrong.  They come to put on a show in every way.  They play without a set list, and deliver their staccato rhythms with the detail you’d expect from a machine.   Shellac songs are designed to be played live. They invite you in just a bit with their sparse rhythms, and then strip you naked and pummel you with their undeniable grooves and perfect blend of guitar and bass frequencies.

Their perfectly executed stops and starts along with their slow motion theatric introduction play perfectly against their sporadic tongue and cheek lyrics.  Make no mistake, Albini is a showman, and 2011 Shellac is the main event.  19 years in, and Shellac is at the top of their game.

Four things you need to know about Shellac live:

1. They are tight beyond belief.
2. Their sound is absolutely beautiful, and absolutely bludgeoning.
3. Every guitar strum, and drum hit has a very definitive sonic purpose.
4. Their dramatic flare elevates them to a completely different level.

(the video does not do the show justice)

Technical Decisions

Technical decisions can be tough…otherwise they wouldn’t so much be decisions, but more just, the way to do it.  But making these decisions is necessary, and doing so in a well thought out, but decisive manner is important.

They reality is that there’s lots of different ways to do things on the web these days.  There are lots of options to choose, like programming languages, web frameworks, databases, web servers…the list goes on.  Although some of these are more easily changed down the road (web servers & databases), others are not (languages & frameworks).  

From time to time I find myself second guessing decisions I have made, but the reality is that no technology is perfect, and rarely is there ever a best choice in all regards.  Every decision comes with trade offs.  The key is to choose based on the two or three points of criteria that are most important to you, and go with it.  Saving catastrophic issues, I think it’s best to embrace your decision, and move on, as oppose to second guessing it down the road.

Well researched, but not researched to death, decisive decisions.  And then move on.

Rails 3 : Migrating to mysql from sqlite

Still being relatively new to RoR, there’s a lot of things that I’m doing for the first time.  I transitioned my database from the default sqlite, to mysql (my db of choice).  (I know that a lot of people prefer postgres, but after talking w/ some of the Heroku guys, they assured my mysql works with Heroku nicely as well.)

Anyways, here’s the steps I took to transition from sqlite to mysql.  I based this off of this q&a on stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1670154/convert-a-ruby-on-rails-app-from-sqlite-to-mysql

1.  Create a new branch, and switch to it.

# git branch mysql-transition

# git checkout mysql-transition

2.  Back up your existing stuff. (cd to app-root first)

 # cp config/database.yml config.database.yml.sqlite3

 # rails plugin install git://github.com/adamwiggins/yaml_db.git

# rake db:dump

3.  Alter your config/database.yml file to use mysql instead of sqlite

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px}

development:

  adapter: mysql

  encoding: utf8

  reconnect: false

  database: **dev_db_name**

  pool: 5

  username: **dev_db_username**

  password: **dev_db_password**

# Warning: The database defined as “test” will be erased and

# re-generated from your development database when you run “rake”.

# Do not set this db to the same as development or production.

test:

  adapter: mysql

  encoding: utf8

  reconnect: false

  database: **test_db_name**

  pool: 5

  username: **test_db_username**

  password: **test_db_password**

production:

  adapter: mysql

  encoding: utf8

  reconnect: false

  database: **prod_db_name**

  pool: 5

  username: **prod_db_username**

  password: **prod_db_password**

Note: You need to create these databases in mysql.  Rails will load the schema/data, but it won’t create the usernames.  (It will create the db’s too (rake db:create), but I don’t think it sets up the user permissions right, so it’s best to do that part yourself.)

3. Edit your Gemfile, by replacing the sqlite line with: 

# gem ‘mysql’

4.  Install the mysql gem:

# bundle install

5.  Load the database schema and data, and setup your test database.

rake db:schema:load

rake db:load

rake db:test:prepare