MOTH Ratings Crowdsourcing: Sad Moth Music NEEDS YOUR HELP!

Recently, Sad Moth Music Editor In Chief Emanuel "Sad Moth Manny" Aviles asked me to meet him in his luxurious corporate office for a work evaluation.  He was not happy.

""Sad Moth" Noah," he said, adjusting one of the five rings on his left hand, "you're just not cutting it.  The site is losing its edge.  Sad Moth Music is supposed to be about a dedication to reviewing albums -- new and old -- in a dynamic way."

"I think I've been doing alright," I replied, "I've been writing more than anyone else."

"Irrelavent!" he roared.  He removed his fat stogie from his lips and jabbed it at me while he talked.  "You're all washed up Stafford.  I just got off a conference call with the Sad Moth Mutimedia CFO, and our projected quarterly numbers are through the floor.  No one is reading the damn blog.  I don't care if you write five-thousand words a day if we're not getting the clicks.  You're writing the articles, but they just aren't connecting with people.  And you want to know why?  You're not dynamic enough.  It says it right there in our mission statement.  I need more dynamism from you Stafford, because right now, you've got about as much edge as a plate of chopped liver!"  He reclined and took a long draw from his cigar, blowing the smoke into my face, fully aware of my severe asthma.

"I'll try and do better sir."

"Better?!?" he screamed, simultaneously standing and pounding his fists onto his solid maple desk.  "I don't want "better", I want a readership! I want content consumption!  I want greater uniques!  I want double our current time-on-page rate!  I want an expanded marketshare! I WANT DYNAMIC REVIEWS OF ALBUMS -- NEW AND OLD!"  He sat back down, his face red from screaming, a dangerously large vein pulsing in his neck.

"Yes sir," I replied, discreetly wiping his spittle out of my right eye.

"You'll have twenty ideas about how to make Sad Moth more dynamic on my desk by tomorrow."

"Ok."

"Not get the hell out of my office."

So here we are, and I'm still at a loss for good ideas.  So I'm putting out a call to loyal Sad Moth readership to help me out.  Currently, my best idea is about 85% formulated, but I need some added ideas to really flesh it out.

My idea is the MOTH Score -- a new and unique (and dynamic) way for Sad Moth writers to evaluate albums.  It consists of a list of the tracks in an album, and an evaluation of each track based on different yes/no type categories, which are then averaged to create one MOTH score.  An example:

So right now I only have four categories: "Bangerz Factor" (wud u bang this shit out ur trunk?), "Bone-ability", (wud u toats bone ur gf to this song?), "Dankess", (wud u get 420 turnt 2 dis track?), and "Feels Index", (do u get doze feels when u listen to dis?).   So looking at the spreadsheet above, "With You Without You" is dank, as well as bone-able, but isn't a banger, nor does it give me the feels.  These are the important opinions.

What I'm looking for is more categories, but I can't think of any.  So I'm looking for suggestions.  Very good suggestions are preferable to shitty ones, but I'll take what I can get.  Leave your suggestions in the comments on this page, or in the facebook comments for this post.  Please.  Bossman "Sad Moth" Manny's really on my ass about this one.

Don't Just Look At The Ratings: A Closer Look At Pitchfork's Numbers -- Part 3: Leaderboards! Fun Fun Fun!

Hi. So here's this.  This is a table I made in the making of my last post, that I didn't really get to, and I think it might be the most interesting one I've made out of the data I collected.  It doesn't really lend itself to a ton of analysis or anything, it's just fun to look at.  For the fans of sports out there, you already understand the infinite beauty of something like this.  So I don't really need to sell you on what I've presented above.  For those who don't, here's what's up.

In this table, I've aggregated all the data by artist.  So pitchfork.mean is the average score that artist received from Pitchfork, and pitchfork.sum is the total score that artist has received amongst all its albums.  Think about it like batting average vs. total hits in baseball.  For most artists, there's very few data points.  This leads to means with very high uncertainty.  But for other artists that Pitchfork has given a lot of attention, pretty definitive things can be said about their scores.  For example, it seems Pitchfork has pretty much decided over its 16 reviews that of Montreal is almost exactly a 7/10 band, and that Animal Collective is pretty much precisely an 8/10 band.  Great.

Kanye West just after being told the Mountain Goats
dropped a new album and it's loaded with bangers.

The aoty scores, I think, are more interesting.  There are many more artists and albums included in these data, so the aotyscore.mean can be considered with much more confidence, as these scores are the means of the means of scores given by a large and diverse set of critics.  Aotyscore.albumsum is the sum of each of the artist's album scores, while aotyscore.reviewsum, the metric that the table is sorted by, is the sum of each album's score, multiplied by its number of reviews.  This is my favorite column to look at, as it's a really good measure of to total mass of both attention and praise the online music press has afforded different artists.  Of course, Kanye is at the top by a wide margin.  And, obviously, the Mountain Goats are in second.  Relatedly, it's a little known fact that "Watch The Throne" is actually a concept album about Kanye's longtime battle with the Mountain Goats for greatest musician of all time.

Anyway, if you want to, give this a quick download and sort.  It's a half-decent way, (and certainly a very easy way) to find new artists that you might not have known got so much press, or were so critically acclaimed.

Don't Just Look At The Ratings: A Closer Look At Pitchfork's Numbers -- Part 2: All Of Pitchfork's Ratings, Like Pretty Much, Ever, And A Look At The Most Extreme Ones

Calvin gets it

Hey, wassup.  I'm back with more spreadsheets about music!  But seriously folks what's the fun in anything if you can't precisely quantify it? THIS IS HARD DATA!

If you're unsure if I'm being sarcastic or not, honestly I'm not sure either at this point.  Regardless, I've been sitting on some great data that I scraped off line way back last summer, and it's time I did something with it.  So I'm going to use a couple different metrics to find weird Pitchfork reviews.  Specifically, I'm going to look at Pitchfork's absolute lowest ratings, it's ratings with the largest difference relative to a consensus, and it's ratings that deviate most from a linear model.  Though this sounds boring, it lead to me reading some truly lol-able reviews by Pitchfork and a couple other blogs.  I'm going to share some choice quotes from those reviews, alongside some classic armchair meta-criticism to try and spice things up.

WE'RE BACK FROM THE DEAD: A Journalistic (Kind of) Review of Wake Up by Pope Francis and the Gang

WE HAVE BEEN RESURRECTED. THE PROG ROCK ALBUM YOU HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR IS HERE. POPE FRANCIS' "WAKE UP!" IS HERE, AND IT'S BEAUTIFUL MESSAGE HAS SUCCESSFULLY RESURRECTED THIS HUMBLE MUSIC BLOG.

I was laying down in my room enjoying a nice afternoon nap when suddenly a booming omnipresent voice called out to me, "EMANUEL, IT IS TIME," and it was in that moment that I knew the second coming was nigh. With a burst of heavenly light and with an explosion that surely has taken away my security deposit, Pope Francis's new prog rock album Wake Up! descended from the sky, through the hole in my ceiling, and into my unworthy hands. A new age of enlightenment had begun. 

I timidly placed the ethereal disc into my CD player, it's glow seeping out of the spaces between the player's compartments. As I stared with awe, the album's opener, Annuntio Vobis Gaudium Magnum's, smooth futuristic synth straight out of a Sunday school tape woo'd me into submission. Amidst the searing power of the track's choir part I somehow managed to summon an utterance, "Wow, it's cool that Jeff Magnum is featured on this." Then he spoke. 

The Pope channeling God himself, summoning infinite wisdom and profound perception--wisdom and perception that entirely encapsulates the mysteries of the universe and mankind himself--opened his mouth and said...something in Italian. BUT, the next track started off with an excerpt in Spanish, so my feeble mortal mind was able to keep up. However, even my four years of Spanish in high school couldn't have prepared me for what came next.

 (Please press play for this next segment)

I sat pinned in my chair: track after track, answer after answer, the reflexive questions about I had about me and my place in the universe were answered. Then suddenly there was a deafening pause stiller than the darkest winter night. Then a break in the constant stream of realization, and I knew it had begun: the albums title track. Its beginning, prepared me for the death and rebirth I was about to experience. The ominous synth in the tracks beginning murmured, and I felt a great pain of a thousand sorrows: I was living life, as vast and complex as it is, in a solitary moment. The track slowly started to pick up with a steady and mind blowing kit, then it added a guitar riff that is so fuckin' bangin' dude, and last but not least it has a preset on the keys that I can say with utmost certainty that it was played by the ghost of Kerry Livgren. Here I sat, and as the awe struck me the song slowly crescendoed to the pinnacle of every piece of music ever, it was as if time and the universe stopped in the most divinely poignant place, "Wake up! Wake up!"


"AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!" I screamed as the flesh seared from my face pooling into a crimson red slush on the floor.

It was here, at my death, where Pope Francis delivered a conjuring speech about waking up and realizing something or whatever I don't really remember but I began rising from the dead, my corpse reassembling into animation, I was being rebuilt, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. 

And with my body another was reborn as well,

Pope Francis, Wake Up!: 2/10, 

We're back :)

Happy listening, 

Emanuel (Sad Moth Manny) 

Sad Moth Concert Tour Pt.7: Blurry Concert Pics and an Intimate Evening With Josh Groban

Upon attending what was billed as "An Intimate Evening With Josh Groban", I was admittedly skeptical.  Groban was not an artist whose genre I was particularly interested in, or liked at all, really.  Little did I know, my decision to attend this seemingly innocuous concert would lead to much, much more than "an intimate evening".  Below is a first person account of my experience.

I walk into the beautiful Chicago Theatre and take my seat.  I nurse my four-dollar clear plastic solo cup of Pepsi and look around skeptically.  Much of the theatre is filled with middle aged women, all wearing Groban shirts and tittering excitedly.  So that's why he's so popular.  I roll my eyes. Whatever.   So a bunch of moms want J-Grobe's D.  That's nothing new.  But as a expert Sad Moth musical critic, I'm here to parse the fact from fiction -- is Groban all image? We shall see.  From what I've seen from my mom's albums, he's not excessively attractive.  The show starts.  Lots of screams when Josh enters from stage right.  He smirks a bit, tells a joke, then opens his mouth.  The second the first note reaches my ears, I plunge into a trance.

After the fifth song, I still haven't blinked. I cannot miss a moment of this brilliance.  I try to listen harder. I cup my ears to take in more sound waves.  I am transfixed.  Josh glides across the stage, he is a vision, a modicum of pure divinity.  He sways, staggering under the power of his own brilliance, his coattails billowing behind him as if he is standing on a jagged outcropping of granite along the Celtic shore.   His booming, vibrant tenor is the single ripple on a motionless lake, the drizzle of honey fresh from the hive, the squawk of an Osprey just as another Nor'easter is blowing in.  His voice is the ascension, the rapture, the brutality and beauty of it all, in symbiosis.  I plug my ears, and I can still hear the music.  I do not need my ears.  His music enters me through my heart.  His aloof, curly hair frames his face, seeming to rise and fall in slow motion.  Josh is a poet, a philosopher, a warrior, a man with needs only I can fulfill.  His pianist coaxes more chords from the keys, the orchestra swells.  I tingle.  I look off to see the guitarist fretting another chord.  I look back at Josh and he is looking directly back at me.  Through me.  Into me.  Then, the world tumbles away.

I look down and I am no longer in my seat in the theatre.  I am on a beach of white sand, surrounded by a thick, impenetrable fog.  But I am not alone.  Josh is there.  Josh and I, me and Josh.  He is wearing a white button down shirt, khaki pants rolled up to the knee, and his navy-blue tuxedo jacket.  I smile sheepishly.  He runs a hand through his curly hair and squints a little.  "Uh, hey, you sing really good," I say.  "Shhhh," he beckons, putting a finger to my lips.  He turns his back to me.  He breathes deeply and a single note escapes his lips.  The fog pulses and gyrates, being manipulated by the music.  Josh continues to sing, and slowly the fog swirls and condenses into a large mass between us.  It takes the shape of a noble steed.  We both climb on.  "Here, grab my waist." Josh says.  I do.  "You have nicely sculpted forearms," Josh comments.  "I work out," I say.  We gallop for what feels like forever, and also no time at all.  At one point, my shoe falls off, and we have to go back to get it.  I hope that Josh will use his razor-sharp extemporaneous wit to come up with a nickname that humorously recalls this incident, like "Reebok" or "One-shoe-Noah" or "Socks".  He does not. 

Eventually we slow to a canter, then to a trot.  A lone tree appears on the horizon.  We dismount and approach the tree on foot.  There are ripe, juicy pears hanging from its branches, and I'm too short to pick them, but Josh is way taller and has a better vertical so he picks a bunch.  We take seats at the base of the trunk and begin to eat.  The pears are so juicy they gush moisture with each bite.  I look at Josh and Josh looks back and we both have juice running down our faces.  Josh smiles and I smile and before long we are both laughing uncontrollably, rolling on the ground like a couple of children.  Josh pulls out a football and we play one-on-one.  Josh is a lot better than me, and every once in a while I win and I know it's because he's letting me win but I enjoy the feeling of victory all the same.

After a while the sun goes down and I get cold, so Josh loans me his dark blue tuxedo jacket, which is still perfectly cleaned and pressed, even after well over an hour of playing football.  We go back to the tree, which is uncomfortable to sit against, so I lay down and rest my head on Josh's thigh.  He looks down at me and I look up at him.  We stare into each other's eyes for some period of time, maybe days, maybe minutes.  Then all at once I understand.  I understand everything.  Why me, why here, why now.  Josh nods, because he knows that I know.  And I nod back because I know that he knows that I know.  I sit up and a lock of his hair brushes my nose.  I close my eyes.  I lean closer.  I can feel his gentle breath on my face.  Now nothing but air separates us.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I open my eyes with a start.  Josh's eyes are just inches from mine.  The eternal loving that I had seen earlier in them was gone.

 "I... I... wa.. I thought..."

 "Do I look like some kinda fag to you, Noah?"

 "No, I mean, I..."
 "What the fuck, I mean, what the actual FUCK." Josh was yelling now.  He got up and started pacing angrily, raking his fingers through his hair.

I was in near hysterics.  Everything was falling down around me.  I lost all orientation.  Struggle mode kicked in. "But...but don't you love me Josh?"

He stopped pacing and stared at me with eyes filled with blind rage.  "Love you? Goddamnit Noah! You cannot even fathom how much pussy I run through on a normal day."

"Nothing? I was nothing to you?"

"No! Goddamnit!  I was just about to do the singing thing again like I did with the horse and turn the mist into two cloud-bitches, and they were gonna suck our dicks and we were gonna hi-five during it and everything.  It was gonna be sweet.  I thought you were my BRO."

"But..."

"Get the fuck outta here."

I tumble back into the abyss. Before I can process what has happened, I am back in my seat.  Josh is still singing.  I haven't missed a second of the concert.  I take my bearings, and consider what I just experienced.  Was it all a dream?  The extraordinary performance comes to a close.  A standing ovation.  Josh exits the stage, yet my confusion remains.  I continue to ruminate on the train home.  It must have been a dream.  There's no rational explanation.  I watch the brownstones of northern Chicago leak by, and try to shake these false memories from my mind. Yet they all still felt so real.

A few days go by, and the memory fades.  My rationality takes over, and I find it easier and easier to dismiss my experience at the concert as a dream or some sort of odd hallucination. 

Four days later, I am in my room preparing to do laundry.  I am checking the pockets of my pants before I throw them in the hamper when I plunge my hand into the pocket of the pair I was wearing the night of the concert.  I feel something small and round.  A shock runs through my body.  I let go of the object and gather myself.  I take a deep breath and reach back in.  I pull it out and stare at it in awe.  A pear seed.  Then it must really have...

My head snaps to the left as a rock taps off my dorm room window.  Then another.  I go to the window and open it.  Josh is there, looking up at me.  My heart leaps into my throat.  He has come back for me.  It is all to surreal.  I finally know what it's like to be in a movie.

"I have something I want to say," he says nervously.  I pine for him.  His gorgeous eyes twinkle below me like ethereal nebulae.

We lock eyes.  Yes. Yes. Yes.  Say it.  Then, suddenly, the side of his mouth twitches upwards in a devilish grin.  I barely have time to register the movement when...

"Your still a fag!" Josh yells, while David Archuleta and Michael Bublé run out from behind the bushes and pelt me in the face with rotten tomatoes.  I collapse on the floor sobbing, tomato stinging my red eyes.  I can hear the three singers laughing and chest bumping below.

"I'm not even gay!" I yell out the window as they walk off.  I slump back down below the sill and put my head in my hands.

"I'm only gay for you, Josh."

Sad Moth Concert Tour Pt. 6: Blurry Concert Picz/Vidz: Gene Ween

Just a few takeaways:

• Gene Ween is a goddamn maniac.  He drinks lemon-flavored La Croix sparkling water on stage.  I would rather drink 10 Sour Patch Kids Slurpees than one can of that vile carbonated dishwater.  It is an evil, revolting drink that I find impossible to choke down.  So naturally, it is a completely rational choice of beverage in the universe of Ween.
• Ween fans are really, really nice. I talked to 10+ strangers before the show.  Ween is a
  common language, which I highly recommend everyone learns.
• This is one of the best concerts I have ever seen.  I think I can safely say that I liked it more than any other concert I have chronicled in the Blurry Concert Pictures series.  And this is just half of Ween.
• The band members are super nice. They hung around after the show and talked with people for a while.

"Yea dude, I saw that hat, I think that's a super cool hat." -- excerpt from conversation with Gene Ween Band guitarist Elijah Austin.

"Did I tell you about the time Gene Ween's guitarist thought my hat was cool?" -- me from now on.

AIDS! HIV!

Surf's Up -- The amazing true story of Cody Maverick

Editors Note:  This review was penned in the salad days of mid-July, 2015.  It was written with the understanding that it would be presented alongside more legitimate reviews, therein creating a humorous contrast between said legitimate reviews and this review.  Such reviews, i.e. those that are not this one, have failed to materialize in the months since this has been written.  The jury is still out, but "general lack of motivation and/or interest" is believed to be the culprit for such failings.  As a result, the review below will be published unaccompanied, and, god help us, will represent Sad Moth Music's definitive take on Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment's no-longer-very-new album Surf.

Consider what is written below as a window into a simpler time, a time when the author had little more to worry about but the heat of the sun and the chill of his iced tea.  Now, published on the eve of the author's regrettable return to his institution of higher learning, and hence a return to general feelings of stress, burden, and responsibility, let this review serve as a post-mordem tribute to the late, great, #Summerrrrrrrrr2015.

Warning:  Before composing this review, the author re-watched Surf's Up, an exemplary 2007 animated feature film.

I think it's important to say right off the bat that this is not a Chance the Rapper album.  Granted that many believed this to be true, I think it's important to not allow any disappointment about this album not being what it was expected to be to get in the way of evaluating what it actually is.  Dismissing this album as subpar because it's not a Chance solo album is a mistake.  It's vital to see this album in its own context, and not through whatever presumptions you had about what you thought it was supposed to be.  Just look at Cody Maverick.  He expected to be the best surfer on the beach as soon as he arrived.  Immediately he challenges reigning champ Tank Evans to a surf off, and, well...

Lol! Cody bailed so hard brah!

It takes this rough fall, and a lot of butting heads and comical hijinks with former surf legend Big Z for Cody to finally loose his ego and view his surfing talent from a rational perspective.

Consider the gif at left as a metaphor for one's enjoyment of Surf if they try to rationalize it as a Chance the Rapper solo album.  But once you meet the album on its own terms you'll be pleasantly surprised to find an album that is the product of a much broader musical community.  Granted, Chance is a dominant voice on the record, but so is Donnie Trumpet's horn, as well as The Social Experiment's trademark smooth bass, groovy synths and thumping kick drum.  But the real range on the record comes from small contributions from a large swath of musicians, which add to make up the majority of the album.  The amount of artists, some famous, some more obscure, that were gathered on this album demonstrates Chance's power not only as a rapper, but as a creative force that can bring other artists together.  Busta Rhymes epitomize's Chance's role on Surf when, on "Slip Slide" he opens his verse with "Heyoo Mr. Chance the Rapper, I greatly appreciate the way you roll out the red carpet, allowing me to articulate myself."  Chance's most important contribution on this album is not his verses, or his production, but being the central figure in the whole project, the glue that keeps the album from falling apart like Cody's first handmade board.


With so many musicians involved in the project, the album loses any chance of making a singular personal statement, but it gains range of diverse, personal moments.  Some of my favorites include Busta Rhymes' barn burner of a verse, in my opinion the best of the album.  B.o.B discusses the potency of his artistry on the same track: "If I plant one of my thoughts marijuana would grow." Chance takes a unique tack in "Windows", warning his own fans against deifying him.  Big Sean and Kyle buoyantly assert they individuality on "Wanna Be Cool", and Erykah Badu floats down from the heavens on "Rememory" with an angelic verse, i.e.: "Chancellor baybeeeeeee".

The great achievement of the album is bringing all these individual contributions together to create a singular tone -- the album is bursting with optimism, serendipity and, somewhat ironically for such a collaborative album, assertions of artistic independence.  I think that's what makes the album for me.  It's really fun to hear a record made by people brought together by a genuine enjoyment of making music with each other.  I mean, they gave the damn thing away for free.  This album exists wholly because these artists wanted it to.

 Yet, though I can say all I want about what I like about this album, I can't ignore the looming fact that some of it isn't that good.  In keeping with the inclusive, community-based feel of this album, there is a lot of instrumentation on these tracks.  Sometimes it works, but many times, the textures just get too busy, and too muddy.  Donnie Trumpet's solo tracks are hit-and-miss.  He seems to be going with a purely melodic approach to the trumpet in these tracks, which sometimes works, (Just Wait) and sometimes doesn't (Something Came to Me).  There are some out-and-out duds too.  "Questions" and "Pass the Vibes" come to mind.  And, let's be honest, if "Sunday Candy" got a bunch of radio play, everyone would be really sick of it by now.  I could go on, but in the end, I'm not sure if I care about my own criticisms.  I know I shouldn't like this album as much as I do, and I'm sure there are a couple more tracks that the other Sad Moth reviewers with think are too chummy, too boring, are mixed poorly, etc., it's just that when I criticize this album I feel like the angry old next door neighbor who calls the cops because the party's too loud.

In the end, this album is powered by an intoxicating distillation of raw, sonic exuberance, which causes me to give its imperfections somewhat of a pass.  As Big Z teaches Cody, it's not about if you win or lose, it's the about the joy of surfing.  Just like this album, Cody doesn't turn out to be the best surfer, he doesn't even win the contest, but he realigns his priorities and is able to appreciate his abilities for what they are.  So kick back this summer, put on Surf, admire it for what it is, and I think you'll really enjoy it.  Oh, and maybe add one more track onto that playlist.  It's called "Get What You Give" by a little o'l band (they're pretty obscure, not sure if you know them but I've got them on vinyl) known as the New Radicals.

Favorite Tracks: "Slip Slide", "Windows", "Wanna Be Cool", "Rememory"

7.5/10