First as Tragedy, Second as Farce – get that Bono off my phono

This week’s song is Prawn’s First As Tragedy, Second As Farce.

I don’t like people playing on my phone.

That’s an allusion to an old Dave Chappelle skit. It’s really dumb, but in all honesty – I don’t like people playing on my phone.

When I woke up to a brand new, awful U2 album ambitiously squatting on my iPhone (I took these photos after the fact. Don’t worry about the timestamp,) I did my damndest to remove the nuisance. It wouldn’t go anywhere.

Swiped left… nothing. Swiped left… nothing.

Remembering albums won’t delete in full on iOS7, I tapped the artist name, tapped the album, and navigated to individual songs.

Swiped left… nothing. Wait, what the hell? A little cloud with an arrow on it? I tapped it. Oops. Incoming U2. The most overrated band in the history of the world was downloading with supreme gusto, invading my phone storage and hurting my moral sensibilities. I panicked and hit every neon cloud I could see to stop the download. I succeeded and promptly vented my rage to Twitter.

WHY IS THERE A U2 ALBUM ON MY IPHONE

— Jake M (@jacobstea) September 10, 2014

I spent the next hour Googling possible solutions to the problem and eventually found that toggling off the “show all music” option in my music settings made the offensive album go away, however superficially.

Apple pushed that album to our phones – it bought us a gift. I despaired at seeing it, and now I make fun of it at every opportunity. (First as tragedy, second as farce. This is why I picked the song above, by the way.)

So what went wrong?

Well, I hate U2. I don’t care for a single song. The Edge is boring. Bono makes my stomach turn, leather pants and all.

I have an image to uphold. I can’t have a U2 album in my damned hip-ass music library. It sticks out like a pair of dad jeans in my dresser or old New Balances on my shoe rack. Apple did me a favour in the way an out-of-touch grandparent would, giving me a size XL Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirt “just because”. You appreciate it because hey, they’re family, but man that gift sucks.

I’m not the only one who was irritated by this whole thing. Within days Apple had released an app or a tool or something that allowed people to completely nuke the album from their system. Scorched Bono earth. Luckily for them the backlash from the invasion was drowned out in people gushing over the iPhone 6 and its behemoth cousin the iPhone 6 Plus. (Speaking of which, I had a chance to see the thing in real life this weekend – it’s way too big. Huge.)

I’m 100 per cent sure Bono thought he was doing the world a favour, so I don’t blame him. He probably convinced the marketing execs at Apple, too, with all the enthusiasm and skill of a young Harvey Specter.

From a marketing perspective, though, I wonder if Apple just missed that it could be seen as downright creepy and offensive that they’d reach the long branch of the tree into our phones and presumptively plant a proverbial apple seed. Apple helping themselves to our libraries, however *ahem* altruistic, really shocked us into realizing that we don’t actually own these devices as much as we think we do.

It’s also a huge mistake to think anyone younger than 30 will like U2.

Anyway, the lessons here, as far as I can tell:

1. Apple – know your audience before spending millions of dollars on something nobody asked for. You made an ASS out of U and ME. At least Bono’s happy… oh wait. No he’s not. And we’re all “haters”.
2. Apple users – Try as you might, you can never fully eradicate U2. You can, however, hide them behind a curtain or wait for Apple to gently escort them out of the room.

Rooms of the House

I’ve neglected the blog a bit. Sorry about that. I had hoped to write a little bit more, but I can’t seem to get the words out right. Maybe I’m out of practice or creatively tapped out. I’ll try to revisit this in the summertime when I’m less tired.

This week’s post is going to be a joint effort – my good friend Connor Snyder bought the deluxe version of the album I’m going to be talking about, so the pictures are his and the words are mine. You can find his blog here.

The front cover of La Dispute’s new album, Rooms of the House.

The back cover.

I met La Dispute in my last year of high school. I hated them. They were kind of whiny, kind of emo and “weak,” and I was a young and invincible fool who listened exclusively to misogynistic rap music and drank light beer and wore flashy clothing. I would make fun of the vocals in the car at Polo Park mall’s parking lot and wonder what the hell my friends were into.

I was an idiot. Generally, people look back on high school and regret themselves almost to a fault, but my friends had the right idea. I’ve grown up alongside them, and alongside La Dispute, in a way.

Powder blue.

Just as I have grown and my friends have grown from reckless, stupid kids into (slightly) calmer and (marginally) smarter young adults, La Dispute has grown. Each album La Dispute releases seems to show a difference, an increased maturity. I was kind of right with my presumption – my prejudgment of La Dispute’s debut album was sort of accurate. Vocalist Jordan Dreyer’s uncontrolled and wobbly voice was off-putting, the lyrics were emotional to the point of cheese, and the album itself was long and drawn out. Given just that one album, I don’t think I’d still like La Dispute.

Then Wildlife came out, and LD showed they were made of stronger stuff. That album is in my top 5 and will probably never leave it.This feels like a rehash of an earlier blog post, but I guess that’s okay. I’ve beaten this newest album to death already on here, but that’s because it’s my favourite of the year thus far.

Stickers, prints, patches.

I’ve been waiting for spring for a long time now. Shell-shocked and glassy-eyed, staring out windows at the various shades of gray that make up our disgustingly dirty and broken streets and boulevards. Muted browns of dead wood, gravel, dead grass and stained snow adorn this great city, and the wind is still ripping through my clothing, making me shiver for all the wrong reasons. Thankfully, I have Rooms of the House to garnish this miserable picture and fill in the shading while I wait for the sun.The album’s narrative is focused on loss and displacement, apathy and lack of motivation. Broken relationships, pessimism, grief, disaster, framed as rooms of a house once inhabited, plain objects that for some reason make you think of her, of him, of then, of there.

All these things are grandiose in their emotional-ness, but in a strong display of their maturity as a band LD manages to portray them artfully, subtly, and humbly.

The musicianship on this album is much more understated, as I had predicted in an earlier post. The relative quiet of the album speaks to the emptiness of the landscape they’ve created, the portrait of despair they’ve painted of the empty and hopeless American Midwest drawn by disparate minor chords and gently spoken words.

Rooms of the House also hosts the two quietest and most melodic pieces La Dispute has ever produced. Woman (In Mirror) and Woman (Reading) are poignant recollections of love not lost but certainly gone. “All the motions of ordinary love,” Dreyer repeats, remembering little things, like how “there’s a dinner – Thanksgiving, dress up nice, make a dish to bring.”

Minimalist, syncopated, poetic.Songs like these can’t be found on the band’s first album, Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair. Just as that album was in your face, emotional, and raw; Rooms of the House is subtle, reflective, introverted, and restrained.

I’ve grown into an adult, more humble, more accepting of the fact that less really is more. You don’t need to scream for impact.This band has grown just as I have, and I’ve watched it grow like I’ve watched the rest of my friends grow. It’s like the band is a friend of mine, for lack of better metaphor. The band is me by association.

If I were an album, I’d be Rooms of the House, and I’m okay with that. I only hope I continue to age as well as La Dispute is aging.