"He's more machine than man now—twisted and evil."

The smokers' voice synthesizer is my Rosetta Stone for unpacking the aesthetics of Auto-tune. The android voice is the sound of a broken human. Cyborg augmentation signifies weakness, not strength—the Droid 2 commercials are lies. The mechanized human is that whose living body is no longer self-sustaining. Remember "Fitter Happier." Auto-tune signifies the human being unable to break free from the inhuman rectilinearity of quantization. Digitization is mutilation. Auto-tune is the muffled voice of a circle stuffed into a square. It is the cry of the organism that is too damaged to express its pain.

Remember Darth Vader. The significance of the mask is only revealed at the very end, when we discover the secret: the whole time, behind the mask, he had kind eyes. The prequels weren't that bad (except for Attack of the Clones, which was) but as far as I'm concerned they don't count. Ewan McGregor was more than good enough as the young Obi-Wan, but the role of Anakin was fatally miscast: Hayden Christensen just looks like a douche. You can tell from the very beginning that he will go down the dark path, and you don't care. His fall to the dark side has no tragic resonance. And a friend once told me that Star Wars was originally titled The Tragedy of Darth Vader.

Darth Vader is no simple villain. People forget that he never comes off as that evil. Sure, he is ruthless and brutal, but unlike the Emperor he shows no signs of sadism. Even Grand Moff Tarkin takes visible pleasure in the prospect of wiping out the Rebellion. But Darth Vader never laughs. On some level, he must have known that the Rebels were going to win the Battle of Yavin 4. That was why he joined the battle in his fighter: he was escaping. Tarkin, a bureaucrat and politician who has probably never flown a starship in his life, scoffed at the notion of evacuating in his hour of triumph seconds before being vaporized along with the rest of the Death Star. Darth Vader does not have a villain's mad hubris. He is not a villain; he is a tragic hero whom we only meet once he has already fallen.

I ought to rephrase what I just said about Auto-Tune. It implies that I have a problem with Auto-Tune—nothing could be further from the truth. I love Auto-Tune, because it represents for me the redemption of quanization. The circle, although stuffed into a square, may represent its pain via various regular polygons. The human creature is made inhuman, denied even the ability to express its pain, but even as it is denied humanity it is nonetheless granted the transhuman right to music. It is no longer human; it is nothing but pain; but this pain may sing the song of itself in the world of regularity which is the only world available to it now that it has been robbed of its aliveness

MY FAVORITE AUTO-TUNE SONGS:
I will explain why I like them so much sometime later.

Lady Gaga, "Starstruck"

Rihanna, "Disturbia"

Daft Punk, "One More Time"

Kanye West, "Love Lockdown"

Ke$ha, "TiK ToK"

Arcade Fire: "Rococo"

My spontaneous theory on Arcade Fire's anti-hipster anthem "Rococo": I wasn't an art history major, but I seem to have an intuitive grasp of what "rococo" means. I know it was a movement in Western art that followed Baroque. Here is the difference, as I provisionally understand it, between Baroque and Rococo: Both are intricate, but Baroque intricacy is structural while Rococo intricacy is merely ornamental. In music, the highest incarnation of the Baroque is Johann Sebastian Bach, particularly his canons and fugues. The complexity of a Bach fugue is so staggering because it emerges organically from the iteration of simple musical premises and stringent laws of thematic development. Aside from the theme itself, very little in the fugue could have been otherwise. It has a fractal orderliness extending to its very core. A complex fugue may be marveled at, but its complexity beckons comprehension. It awaits the mind subtle enough to master it.

Rococo, in contrast, strives only to marvel those naïve enough to fall under its spell. Its melodies are not iterated rationally--they are merely garnished with ornamental curlicues designed to make them sound complex. Under its sheen of complexity, rococo is simple and trite. Rococo is meant to sound sophisticated in order to appeal to people who are trying to appear sophisticated.

Thus also with the modern kids, using great big words they don't understand. The fictionalized version of Lester Bangs portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Almost Famous says that "the only true currency in this world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." But that currency loses its value—or, to paraphrase Jesus of Nazareth, this salt of the earth loses its taste—when what was once uncool suddenly slingshots right straight into the heart of cooldom.

The Arcade Fire are not cool. For God's sake, just look at them: they're a bunch of dorks! From Canada! They're also probably the best band on the planet right now. Most really good music, especially nowadays, is made by people who are uncool. To make really good music, you have to spend a lot of time working on making music and not a lot of time out partying with the in-crowd or making friends. People who would choose to spend most of their time making music instead of socializing tend to be awkward and asocial by nature, which is to say uncool.

The same is true of sophistication in general: it is uncool. Sophistication means, in this context, unironic enthusiasm for things that take effort to understand. It's like the kid in third grade who sat on the swing reading The Giver during recess instead of playing four-square. Or at the very least it's like that group of four or five kids who broke out their Magic cards whenever they had a spare moment. In general, sophistication smacks of those kids who liked indoor recess better than outdoor recess.

In this respect, and in this respect only, I am proud to call myself a hipster. That is, I am proud to call myself a hipster inasmuch as by "hipster" I mean "uncool person who spends his time reading sophisticated books and listening to sophisticated music instead of making friends." Uncool sophistication devolves into cool counterfeit sophistication at every generation; don't worry, it'll pass. And until it does, we can all take comfort in knowing that just because you're a bunch of uncool dorks doesn't mean you can't be the best band on the planet.

LCD Soundsystem

I've never been much of an LCD Soundsystem fan, but I thought I was going to die laughing.

New Weezer Album

I'm two track's into Weezer's new album, Hurley, and so far it's phenomenal. There may be a lot of contenders for Album of the Year this year.

(addendum: Music does not get better than "Ruling Me." Spread the good news: Weezer is back!)

(second addendum: Okay, maybe I spoke too soon--not all the songs are as good as "Ruling Me." Still, one great song is not bad.)

(third addendum: Okay, the new Weezer album actually sucks. That's what I get for making snap judgments.)

"How I Got To Be This Way"

I'm surprised to be saying this, but "How I Got To Be This Way" is actually kind of a great song. It's on VEVO's "On The Rise: Country" playlist, but Southern drawl and the rural flavor are pretty much all that make it country. I'd class it, rather, with what is sometimes called power pop. It might not be all that original, but that's not the point: it's tight and catchy and chock full of heart.

American Apparel Is The New Abercrombie & Fitch

The most important thing to know is that American Apparel is the new Abercrombie & Fitch. Which is to say, all of a sudden even the popular kids are dressing like hipsters. I'm not just saying this because I recently started spending most of my time in the vicinity of 12th and Broadway. I see the change just as much in mass culture, particularly in certain music videos for songs by artists who could not be more mainstream: Katy Perry, Usher, and Taio Cruz. About five years ago hipsterdom started riding a dialectical whiplash headed straight for the dead center of the mainstream. The period of 2004-2005 was the breaking point, the era of "Float On" and the Postal Service and Franz Ferdinand and the soundtrack to Garden State. The last six months or so were the Age of Gaga, which is now on hold until she releases her new album. With Gaga momentarily back-burnered, the air that has rushed in to fill her void is all hipster-inflected. Alternative is truly the new normal.

That poor girl who fell out of a 25th-floor window her first night (or thereabouts) at the Parsons School of Design was, judging from the few pictures I've seen of her, a patron of American Apparel or some analogous brand. The police found a small camera next to her body, and speculated that she may have climbed outside the window to take a picture--presumably, a picture to post on her "online diary." Hipsterdom has spread via the Internet.

The "Teenage Dream" video was shot to look like a Facebook photo album come to life. This shows us beyond a doubt that this abrupt change is because people now spend more time on Facebook than they do looking at professional photography. Mark Zuckerberg had no idea what an all-devouring monster he was unleashing on the world.

Far East Movement: "Like a G6"

I kind of like this song, or at least the opening chorus.

"Poppin' bottles in the ice...like a blizzard/When we drink, we do it right, gettin' slizzered/sippin' sizzurp in my ride, in my ride, like three-six/Now I'm feelin' so fly, like a G6."

That's not bad, although I doubt anyone in the video is sippin' sizzurp in anyone's ride, unless by "sizzurp" you mean "Malibu" and by "ride" you mean "drunk driving is dangerous." And admittedly the thing goes from decent to horrible as soon as those scrubby dudes show up and start rapping. But these days, 38 seconds of decent music should be enough for anyone.