LINKED: Arcade Fire Won the Album of the Year Grammy



So they've done it, won the Grammy and graduated from their status of reigning King of Indie. Not that it's such a bad thing but you know, you can only push the indie envelope by only as much which, by getting the recognition from an institution of mainstream manufactured pop fodder, should count you out. Things can only go forward and for better perhaps? The next King of Alternative Rock, yes? (News source)

Note: Will be giving The Suburbs a spin again all along this week and see if it will grow on us finally.

LISTED: 30 Best Albums of the Last Decade (2000 - 2009)

*As the year 2010 is about to draw its curtain close, it is the time of the year (of any year) for many music sites and blogs to come up with a top list of albums of the year. Yes indeed the year 2010 has seen many interesting releases worthy of at least a top 20 list. But here at The Genuine Mind Zine we decided to do things a bit different and take a look at some of the best (of the best) releases throughout the last decade. This may not be the most comprehensive list around, lack of hip hop records for one, but all the albums listed here are indeed the most precious of last decade's precious gems.

1. Arcade Fire - Funeral (2004)


This choice of making Funeral as the best album ever released throughout last decade should not come as a big surprise to many music publications who had their ears on the burgeoning Indie scene because by the time their third record dropped somewhere this year, they were already the most important act to ever grace the genre this side of the century. And all that praises going in their direction is totally understandable when what they have basically achieved with their debut is legendary greatness, of epic proportion. I'm using all this 'huge' words because this 2004 release is a 'huge' record in its own. Let's delve further on that point...

We have made it clear in the previous entry that when it comes to music, we look at the whole experience of listening to it, rather than just a remark of what was apparent on the surface, to deem the album as a masterpiece. And that is how Mastodon made it to number two because it made us feel awesome, ahead of Beck who had just written the most sincere album ever known to mankind. But alas, making us feeling like a total badass still meek in comparison as to how Arcade Fire's debut sounds like. We'll give you the basics first: it's a very delicate album that doesn't shout in your face and stamp its authority all over your heart, but rather very gently tugs at it and squeezes it until the tears comes out.

If that description sounds more troubling than comforting, more painful than insightful, then it could not get any truer about this album that it so much deserves the coveted first place. 2004 was the first time ever throughout my listening to music years in which I cried while listening to it. There is this painful, harrowing scream that echoes throughout the album which could only come from a long-tormented soul whose existence is only confirmed by the occasional act of solitude howling at the full moon, it is entirely impossible for anyone to not notice it. There has never been any other album that we've listened to that has such an overbearingly powerful emotion, delivered in its full glory, unfiltered by adulthood or level-headed sensibilities, it prompts you to coil in a fetal position while trembling and sobbing uncontrollably.

Think about the exact moment when someone you loved passed away; think of how empty your soul felt on that day, of how you felt that the world around you has crumbled and withered away and there is no more hope left in life and living - that is about as close as how you would experience, emotionally, when listening to this album. Not because incidentally the album was titled funeral, but because when they were in the midst of making this record, four of the band members lost a member of their family. We were thinking along the line of "so that's where they got the inspiration to make this album sounded like they were really hurt". Watch the video I've embedded below and try to get the whole feel of the song - it should reduce you to tears. It did that to me.

Modern day classic.

One Day Holiday - A Tale of Loss, Anguish, Heartbreak, and a Fire at the Arcade

* One Day Holiday is an unscheduled, published-whenever-I-feel-like-it column for Hafeez, a resident blogger for this blog. This column is centered mostly around music and random stuff that ranges from the coherent to the absolutely absurd


I am living in a crazy world today. Allow me to explain the use of 'I am' in that sentence instead of the usual 'We are'; supposing that you dear readers have heard of such saying before this by someone else because I'm pretty sure about this that someone have said it way earlier before I did. The only logic to why I used 'I am' and not 'We are' is because I believe that physical, mental, and emotional experience of a person with the (should I say) graphical and physical representation of life differs from one person to the other. Let's say right now you are going through one of the most exhilarating phase of your life, and everything, just about everything, is all rosy and hopeful and enjoyful and memorable and exciting and positive, just remember that the person next to you might be going through one of the worst phase in his/her life. So even if you are going through the (sort of) 'sunny side up' phase, other people might not be as lucky as you. So life, as it turns out, is only defined by the physical, mental, and emotional experience and perception of one person.

Let me introduce to one of my colleague, I call him 'Hamtat'. To those who know, know. He has only been working at the college for almost a year and makes a decent monthly wage. Decent as in small car, shared rented apartment, measly daily meal, local cheap holiday (once every six month, or a year), bank loan repayment for a lifetime, and almost nonexistent savings in bank account. Hamtat on one hand fits into almost all of the description, except owning a car. Because he don't have one. Good for him. But one more thing about him that is not included in the fore-mentioned description is that currently he is doing his Master's Degree, and the tuition fee comes out of his own pocket money. So a large chunk of his salary goes into study as well. Fine. So you add all that up and you'll get the idea that he don't really have any extra money to, you know, 'flash about'. This is where it all gets a bit mental - this morning, he proudly announced that he's applying for TWO (2) credit cards. TWO (2). From different banking institution. So he might have been joking when he said that one credit card will be used to buy a new HD LED TV (That stuff alone costs RM2000, cheapest), while the other credit card goes to buying the Sony PlayStation 3, or a BluRay disc player, or Astro, whichever is more appealing. But he's certainly not joking with about applying TWO (2) credit cards. He's had both forms filled and "will apply for it at lunch hour". Hamtat certainly has balls.

This then reminded me of a short video I watched at the MNS Open Day, held last Saturday at the Taman Tasik Bukit Kiara. I have enlisted myself as a volunteer. The video that I watched was called "The Story of Stuff" (the title might be wrong). The overall message of the video actually was about recycling - how recycling can save the world from destruction or something, and how it is important for the survival of all life on Earth, and man especially. But the issue that was raised in order to highlight the importance of recycling is how America has turned itself into a strictly consumerist society - that in order for the American society to grow and to expand, they need to purchase. And in that process of purchasing, somehow, one way or other, you have to discard as well. Because if you just keep on purchasing but not discarding, soon you'll end up needing a house as big as an airplane hangar, and that is simply not going to happen. Unless you are insanely rich. The other factor that you have to keep in mind is that the size of your household might not grow in the same fashion as with your purchasing activity, so the more you purchase, the more you have to discard. And this is where shit starts to go crazy - because the more stuff you discard, the more landfill we need to 'take care' of all the refuse.

One of the ways of how businesses, enterprises persuade you to keep on staying in the never-ending circle of purchasing is through advertisements. Ever realized how did the technology development in the IT industry grew and self-expire quicker than a fifth grader can spell iPod? The speed into how this industry is growing is blindingly quick that if you don't play catch up, you'll end up in the Jurassic age in just three years' time. It's apocalyptic. The reason why and how the technology grow and rapidly improved itself is associated with how they want you, the consumer, to buy. They make you look and feel like you're still in the Dark Ages if you're still using that 'old' Pentium Dual Core 3GB DDR Ram 320 GB SATA hard disk drive nVidia graphic card, DVD-RW optic drive, 32 inch wide screen flat LCD monitor, if you don't own the 64GB Apple iPad. They'll make you feel as if Alex Bell is laughing at you from his grave if you don't already own the Apple iPhone 3GS. So in the end, the end-users, or the consumers, or in my case, Hamtat, took the bait and purchased what he believed is essential to his being as a modern man. Bravo.

It is pretty heartening to know that my existence in today's world, or actually my status quo as a citizen of planet Earth, is determined by the number of amazing, stylish, and perhaps importantly latest, new gadgets that I own. It's like, if you don't have one of those, you're incomplete as a human being. That, in order for you to be accepted into the herd, you need to 'flash about' the amount of money that you have (or might not have) by investing in these status quo setter. It doesn't matter how much money Hamtat will have left for him to make it through the remaining three weeks before the next payroll rolls out, if he has all these creature comfort, his life is fine. As if, his whole life, existence, and the meaning to his existence, depends solely on it.

In the past two weeks or so I have been listening to Arcade Fire's brilliant debut Funeral. And there are certain parts in that album that poetically makes sense to this whole thing that is going on around my crazy life. It is a lavish swathe of celebration and empathic call into celebrating life and the meaning of our existence in this world, of crying a solitude tears for the departed soul, for the departed loved ones, for the never ending search for the truth and the certainty in uncertainty. The one and only thing that matters when it comes to the definition of life in each and every person is in the contact that we made with other people. Because think about it, we are all born into this world alone. We go through emotions, events, circumstances, ups and downs, places - all of these, alone. Because the real experience of all of it is in the person him/herself only. If you're going through a rough patch, only you yourself know how painful it feels, and only you yourself actually know how to cheer yourself out of it. If you're in the throes of enjoyment, yes everyone can see it and yes everyone will join in your celebration, but deep down inside you know that it's only you yourself who know how it feels like. Thus, if your mere existence in this world is only made meaningful by the manner in how you 'flash about' your belongings (ignore the sexual innuendo), then what's the meaning of life itself? Because to view life in my definition, then there are currently three billion (I made that up) different version of lives going on right now. Yours is just one in that huge number - would it matter if you shut the door to yours and concentrate on the worldly goods? Would your life matter if it is kept hidden under the rubble of false pretense of ownership?

That's what I've said. I am living in a crazy world today.