Music Monday

This edition of Music Monday has an unplanned theme: Kinda Whiny Guys. You'll see why in a sec.

I avail myself of the free iTunes cards at Starbucks and on occasion kinda like what I find. One of these was Chris Bathgate, Yes I'm Cold. Not a real video but you get the point:



Here's Serpentine



Don't like that one quite as much and really don't think I could listen to a whole album of this. Next.

I just started getting the New Yorker again. I have a total love-hate relationship with this magazine and as a result need to take time off periodically. We break up because it's incredibly pretentious, the cartoons are often revoltingly sexist, their cadre of fiction writers snoozingly predictable. We get back together because there is often a ton of interesting stories and I can ignore the things that bug me, the way you would ignore a loved one's snorty laugh or tendency to hog your side of the bed.

Last week's issue saw pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones wetting himself over the band Bon Iver. Bon Iver is headed by Justin Vernon, a 27 year old from Eau Claire Wisconsin. Sconnie in the house! I had never heard of them but his fawning review alone made me seek out stuff on interwebs.

Here's Flume:





And here's Skinny Love:



S'okay, I guess. Not feeling like I need to fall down about it, or even that I need to listen to it again. Though I do love men singing falsetto, this feels a bit bloodless. One YouTube commenter made a good point: "There's a lot of mythology around Bon Iver - heartbreak, seclusion - that obscures the fundamental question - is it any good?" He's referring to the much-discussed extended illness and recuperation that Vernon experienced in a remote Wisconsin cabin, shortly after a relationship ending. It's true that every article I read about him references this story, and there is a sort of awe that surrounds him that I don't totally get. But I think I would see them live, just to see if I could experience this:

"I saw them play this song at the Rex theater. The harmonics in the solo fragments of this song will literally blow your mind wide open. It produced resonances in different parts of my body, I can't properly describe the effects."

I've heard about these full-body orgasms but have never experienced one myself. Maybe Bon Iver is like the Hitachi Magic Wand for wannabe Tantrics. That would certainly be worth the price of admission.

Question, reader: is it considered plagiarism to not cite a blog comment? We like to do things right here at Professional Critic, so just in case, these are YouTube commenters; the skeptic was rosecroix and the full-body experience was fablekeys.

TGIF, reader.