M.I.A. just doesn't matter anymore.

So I was listening to "Maya" MIA's new album streaming on her hideously ugly Myspace page the other day and was left rather irritated by the whole affair. This is a hard thing for me to admit because up until recently I'd loved pretty much everything that MIA had put out.

When Diplo posted about much of her sounding like Skinny Puppy I thought that might be cool, it's been a long time since any artist has had an industrial influence. Unfortunately, on listening to the album I hear that Diplo is right, especially on the track "Steppin Out" but it's not "Bites" Puppy or even "Too Dark Park" Puppy it's "Mythmaker" Puppy, which itself sounds like Puppy trying to reinvent themselves as an industrial version of Britney Spears circa "Blackout". So yes, MIA has an industrial edge but it's a sound and fury signifying nothing kind of industrial edge and it never quite gels with the beats. Give me MIA rapping over a "Land of Rape and Honey" Ministry loop and I'd be a happy lad, that is nowhere to be found.

What we do get is the noisy and gross track "Teqkilla" where 35 year-old MIA raps about pot and Tequila, man that's crazy! Well, at least it would be if she Ke$ha's age, instead there's a word we use for adults pretending they're still 17 and that word is pathetic.

The Diplo track "Tell Me Why" sounds like one of those whole world together songs that the "World Cup" would use in advertisements and is a far cry from the screamingly powerful lo-fi globalism of "Bird Flu" and other KALA hits.

"Born Free" (best known for the controversial ginger child killing video that got pulled to the adults only section of Youtube which in turn gave birth to MIA's "you can't silence me" youtube-y cover) is like a low rent "Bambo Banga" sampling Suicide instead of the Modern Lovers and switching the perspective from a person on the street harassing people in their Honda to a spoiled rich person harassing you at a party with stories about how powerful and free they are. Jesus, she's got the spoiled rich person complex as much as the worst conservatives.

Not to say I don't like any of it, "It Takes A Muscle" is a really good Major Lazer song that she sings on. "Space" isn't bad either. "XXXO" is a good lo-fi Lady Gaga-style pop track, though I was unimpressed by the Jay Z remix version. The Sleigh Bells riff on "Meds and Feds" is great, unfortunately the same riff is used to much better effect in the Sleigh Bells own music.

At the end of the day it's no big deal to not like an album. It disappoints me because I'd loved her other two albums so it's a little weird to not be buying this one. Oh well, thanks to her label for posting the album on Youtube so I can now avoid it.

My guess is that this is as big as MIA will ever be, after this she'll be a little toxic and her next album will be a "return to form" that carefully re-makes her in her own old image in an attempt to grasp onto the fans but she'll never again have this big of a mainstream attention grab.

Sensation Junky (Ballard Breaks It Down)

Modern society makes sensation junkies of us. In the 60s it was sex, in the 80s it was violence, where's the sensation obsession these days? In yoga we talk about people pushing themselves physically past neutrality, past the ability to find solid breath control in order to find sensation. There's one angle. There's also the angle of sensation through gluttony, through inter-personal drama, through voyeurism and conversely through exhibitionism.

That last point, exhibitionism, seems to be a valid source of fuel for the modern sensation junky. You get your fifteen minutes of fame via facebook where your personal drama gets elivated and even reviewed. Increasingly what cannot be talked about, what cannot be blogged about, what cannot be seen/heard and commented on lacks reality.

Communication itself has mutated and evolved, in an eastern sense we are living in an age where the throat chakra is in over-abundence drawning out even the heart. We've been weened on taglines to the point that we lack the ability to look past or even speak our own reality past the basic headline. How many characters does a tweet contain? 256 or somesuch.

Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)

Hmmm, I read about this on Pitchfork today. Not what I expected from Raveonettes (well musically it is but lyrically it's not at all). When I think about it, I'm rather amazed that I've never heard a strong anti-rape pop song before. It's quite catchy and very sad at the same time. Does the song belittle the topic? I don't think so, I think that the very real issue of rape should be more in the public eye and I'm OK with a song going out against it. The lyrics are simple but then so are the lyrics of most anti-war or politically based songs. Simplicity, when in alignment with strong melody and beat, is a powerful tool. Rape is still hidden from the public eye and yet it's so frequent and one of the worst things about it is that due to the sexual nature of the crime it makes the victims feel terrible about themselves in a way that robbery or (non-sexual) assault do.

Meanwhile, the art scene signs a petition to get Polanski exonerated. Blech.

OK, apologies for the mini-tirade

The Reason for the Season

We've all seen mention about the "Reason for the Season" and putting "Christ" back in "Christmas" so I got to thinking about this. Now "Christ back in Christmas" makes some sense linguistically but the "Reason for the season" despite having a rhyme scheme and fitting more easily into contemporary Christian song lyrics, doesn't make the same sort of sense.

If Jesus is the reason for the season and the season we're entering right when Christmas comes around is winter (which starts 12/21) then it follows that Jesus must be the reason for winter, the season rather than Christmas the holiday inside the season. Inititally, this may seem a rather strange thing for his followers to lay claim to but maybe, upon further examination this makes perfect sense.

Winter is the time when everything is dead and cold so suddenly our gentle Jesus is recast as a lord of death. Now if Jesus is a cold god of death that might make Satan a hot god of life. It does fit with the concept that Hell, the bad place, is known first and foremost for its heat. Are those who are heavenbound going to find need for heavenly parkas to go with their harps and wings? Perhaps it also introduces a reason for the evangelicals to fight Global Warming. Global Warming is the devil's way of trying to exert his hot control over Jesus' glorious cold globe. Revelations! End days are close! More signs! Peter Popoff should open a ministry at the North Pole so as to be closer to the source.

So remember, the next time you complain about the cold weather, you're really complaining about Jesus. Those of you who vacation to warmer climates beware, you're running from God! When you complain about someone being cold or icy you're complaining about them being Godly. Truly, a god fearing person must re-evaluate a great deal once they've discovered this new truth.

So here's to the second coming - it'll be an ice age for sure!