When Did I Download This?

Spoon - Girls Can Tell

2012-02-06T15:22:00.000-05:00

Release Date: 20.02.2001

★★★★★ Tracks:

Everything Hits at Once
Lines in the Suit
Anything You Want

Spoon is more of a singles group than a group I play entire albums from. The three records that host the majority of those singles were released all in a row, starting with 2001's solid Girls Can Tell. The best track is its opener, "Everything Hits at Once" is a chilled-out piece of pop that conjures Rubber Soul and Revolver era Beatles. Britt Daniels and Co. are unabashed 60's fanboys, the bare-bones instrumentation of drums/bass/guitar, the occasional electro-keys, and Britt's infectious voice the results of mimicking those Zombies, Stones and Beatles records they're so influenced by. Although they more often lean towards the poppier era of the 60's, they do have the occasional rockers like the Zeppelin-influenced "The Fitted Shirt" and the more modern indie-sounding "Take a Walk". But their at their best when digging up those flowery, psychedelic sounds and reimagining them, as "Anything You Want" and "Lines in the Suit" can attest to.

Spy Versus Spy - Little Lights and Various

2012-01-29T21:30:00.000-05:00

Release Date: ??.03.2000

★★★★★ Tracks:

Waiting for Centralia to Sink
Best Man Nomination
Red Cars Go Faster
Game Ruiner

I’ll be honest, I ripped this record a long time ago. Pre-torrent and mediafire days, but post Napster. Anyone remember Kazaa? Audiogalaxy? Damn, you could find just about anything between those two sites. Audiogalaxy had some of the rarest stuff you could find on the internet. And with the little known post-hardcore outfit from Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom, it was the only way I was able to get a copy of the excellent Little Lights. Knowing how difficult it was to find Spy Versus Spy material I’ve carried that same rip with me for over a decade now. Regulars who’ve read my Strikeforce Diabo or Twelve Hour Turn posts know how much I dig the oft-mocked math-rock/screamo/hardcore genres. The now defunct Spy Versus Spy are one of the best at combining all of that late, Fugazi-influenced rock.

The daunting, terrific “Waiting for Centralia to Sink” is Little Light’s first track, a nearly 9-minute long epic jam I can still put on repeat to this day. Its three-minute long breakdown, so prevalent to all those late and great 90’s emo outfits, is its highlight -- a groove so fucking slick they make it sound easy as they glide along in 6/4 time. “Red Cars Go Faster” hits full force with an off-kilter drum beat while the guitars dual start/stop melodies to perfection, reminding me of some of the best Hot Water Music material from the mid-90’s. “Best Man Nomination” is consistently erratic, doubling its speed, stopping and starting on a dime, mixing screams and howls with whispers and soft vocals. I was able to grab a few tracks not included on Little Lights, (“Game Ruiner”, “Union Station Still”, “Rich Girls’ Mistletoe”) which follow the same unique formula Spy Versus Spy patented.

I know this isn’t for everyone, but these dudes created some of the best screamo/post-hardcore we’re ever going to hear, and it’s a shame they never garnered the success that some of their counterparts (Braid, Hot Water Music) have.

St. Vincent - Actor

2012-01-23T20:10:00.000-05:00

Release Date: 09.04.2009

★★★★★ Tracks:

Actor Out of Work
Laughing with a Mouth of Blood
Marrow
The Party

I thought Actor was overhyped when it first came out. It was strange, it was intimidating, its hooks were subdued, it was artsy. But then Strange Mercy dropped two years later and I couldn’t stop playing the damned thing. Revisiting St. Vincent’s sophomore record has led to the discovery of an incredibly strong Side B. I first heard the bizarre “Marrow” on a Letterman episode and was impressed by the musicality of the whole thing. Her performance was solid, but it took me a half dozen listens to fully embrace its groovy glory, its wind and brass led instrumentation, the brilliance of its mechanical sound pairing with Clark's pleas to no longer be controlled.

The song that immediately hit me was “The Party”, a beautiful piece driven by a slow, refrained swing, which backs the story of a budding romance. “The Bed” has a haunting feel, complete with the harnessed echoes of Disney music that has, as far as I’m concerned, become her trademark; the effects and its theatrical nature hearkens to Andrew Bird. The best of the best is “Laughing With a Mouth of Blood”, which begins with an expertly crafted, finger-picking riff and opens up in to an upbeat, almost hip-hop like rhythm. When the acoustic riff comes back in Clark sings my favorite lyrics on the record: “All of my old friends aren’t so friendly / All of my old haunts are now haunting me”. It turns out there’s an amusing video for the song as well, Portlandia fans should be pleased.

St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

2012-01-17T21:22:00.000-05:00

Release Date: 12.09.2011

★★★★★ Tracks:

Cruel
Surgeon
Northern Lights
Strange Mercy
Champagne Year

Back to the grind, but at least I get to start back up with one of the best records of 2011. When I was reading reviews and watching music videos and live performances from St. Vincent in preparation for this post, I stumbled across an up and coming music critic in Anthony Fantano. The reason I mention him is because he beat me to the punch in what I thought was a clever way to describe St. Vincent’s music: a sort of warped mixture of rock'n'roll, art pop and Disney fairy tale scores. While that might sound unappealing, Annie's beautiful voice in combination with her contemplative lyrics makes the whole thing work. Instead of idealistic romance she sings of realistic love; the complications of politics in relationships, her struggles with equality, and honest confessionals of her own wrongdoings and shortcomings.

St. Vincent's first single, “Cruel”, is a solid introduction, although not an accurate representation of the record as a whole. It's the poppiest of the bunch, bouncing along cheerfully enough that one might not notice the undercurrent of sadness Clark projects as she sings about objectification and its guilty exploiters. It's hard to know where to go from here, and it's because the sum adds up to more than its parts. There aren't any duds on Strange Mercy but highlights include the tragic title track "Strange Mercy", "Northern Lights" with its the TV on the Radio like production, the solemn, tongue-in-cheek “Champagne Year”, and "Surgeon", which contains some of the best guitar licks you've heard in years. And damn, Annie Clark can play with the best of them. Her fret work is the stuff of experts, and her cutting-edge use of effects and pedals is awe-inspiring. I urge you to watch her work on “Surgeon” and “Strange Mercy” in the video posted below. It’s phenomenal stuff.

St. Vincent’s Strange Mercy is one is one of 2011's best records. I still have it on regular rotation, and the more I listen the more I pick up subtle, rewarding nuances in the layers upon layers of instrumentation St. Vincent includes. Annie’s combination of songwriting, studio technique, guitar prowess, beautiful voice, and honest lyricism are pushing her towards the mainstream. And yea, her looks don’t hurt either. Perhaps that's one of St. Vincent’s conundrums, for all the emphasis Clark puts in her distaste for objectification, the audience can’t help but do so. The blogs and the youtube fan videos (especially this one) and comments sections can attest to this. It adds more intrigue to Strange Mercy and the Annie Clark persona though, which in turn increases her popularity. However these are minor issues attributed to her success, if they're issues at all. For now she's undoubtedly celebrating the fact that she's one of the best artists and performers on the circuit.

Best of 2011: Black Lips - "Family Tree"

2011-12-31T09:57:00.002-05:00

Black Lips needs no introductions.

Best of 2011: Wilco - "Black Moon"

2011-12-30T09:55:00.001-05:00

The strongest arrangements since Yankee Foxtrot reside on The Whole Love. I'm always a sucker for subtle finger-picking and string accompaniments, which makes "Black Moon" one of my favorite songs of the year.

Best of 2011: The War on Drugs - "I Was There"

2011-12-28T14:10:00.002-05:00

Slave Ambient often borders a little too closely on sleepy, adult contemporary pop, but the lush, cool melodies of "I Was There" prop it above most of the other songs included to make it one of the best tracks of the year.

Best of 2011: James Blake - "The Wilhelm Scream"

2011-12-27T13:02:00.000-05:00

David Byrne said it best: "The robotic repetition of the few words that he uses starts to build up and it becomes this emotional incantation. Maybe I'm completely reading into it, but it's really amazing that it's not just electronics-- there's actually heart in there somewhere."

Best of 2011: Clams Casino - "Motivation"

2011-12-23T22:13:00.000-05:00

Best instrumental jam of the year. How to Dress Well vibe with a little more polish.

Best of 2011: Shabazz Palaces - "Are You... Can You... Were You? (Felt)"

2011-12-22T15:59:00.000-05:00

This one is tough. "Swerve..." is such a great song but it gets all the love so I'm going with "Are You... Can You... Were You? (Felt)" as Shabazz's top track. The chill groove is so slick, and should we expect less from the part of the trip responsible for "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)"? Both of these songs by Shabazz Palaces would be included if I extended the list out a few songs.

Best of 2011: WU LYF - "Cave Song"

2011-12-21T20:20:00.001-05:00

WU LYF intend to inspire on an epic scale; the sort of sweeping compositions that hearken to Explosions in the Sky. The key difference: whereas Explosions is all instrumental, WU frontman, Ellery Roberts, sings with one of the most distinguishing guttural growls you'll ever hear. Somehow the blend works perfectly. "Cave Song" is the highlight, a relentlessly momentous, up-tempo rock anthem.

Best of 2011: Unknown Mortal Orchestra - "Nerve Damage!"

2011-12-20T22:46:00.001-05:00

I've been waiting all my life for someone to embrace Peter Frampton's talking guitar. And I'll most likely continue to wait, but at least Unknown Mortal Orchestra start "Nerve Damage!" with a sweet introduction. The guitars, the weird mix of falsetto and baritone vocals and the surfy/psychedelic vibes make this a 2011 favorite of mine.

Best of 2011: St. Vincent - "Northern Lights"

2011-12-19T16:12:00.001-05:00

Over the past few years there hasn't been a more exciting guitarist than Annie Clark. When you hear her wonky guitar licks and solos you envy her skill-level, when you hear the use of all her pedal and digital effects you gasp at her originality, and when you hear her expertly complex yet catchy compositions you realize there isn't a better pure guitarist and songwriter working today. The new record, Strange Mercy has exceeded all the already high expectations she set for herself, and is without a doubt her best collection of material to date. There isn't a dull track to speak of so it's hard to pick a favorite. I'm going with "Northern Lights," a momentous song with abrasive, mechanical guitar chaos and a production style that would fit right in with TV on the Radio's best work.

Another great song as an example of how sick her guitar skills are (skip to 1:38 if you don't wanna wait): "Surgeon"

Best of 2011: Fleet Foxes - "Helplessness Blues"

2011-12-16T17:21:00.001-05:00

If i had an orchard
I'd work till I'm sore
And you would wait tables
And soon run the store

Best of 2011: Cass McCombs - "County Line"

2011-12-14T19:34:00.000-05:00

"County Line" is just good old-fashioned singer/songwriter heartbreak, and it's a top 5 track of the year.

I feel so blind
I can't make out
The passing road signs

Best of 2011: Caveman - "Decide"

2011-12-13T21:01:00.001-05:00

Saw these guys open for Yuck back in April at the Bowery Ballroom, prompting me to search for a download as soon as I got home. The strongest track they played I recognized immediately, "Decide" has a Grizzly Bear feel, complete with reverb guitar and falsetto harmonies. The album as a whole is a bit uneven but there weren't many tracks I played more than this one in 2011.

Best of 2011: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - "Heart in Your Heartbreak"

2011-12-12T21:40:00.000-05:00

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart further 90's influenced indie rock's surge with their new record. Traces of Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine can be heard throughout, but the best song here sounds like an homage to early Belle and Sebastian. "Heart in Your Heartbreak" is too damn catchy to leave off a best tracks of 2011 list.

Best of 2011: Kurt Vile - "Runner Ups"

2011-12-11T17:40:00.001-05:00

My best friend's long gone but I got runner-ups.
Yeah.

Best of 2011: Destroyer - "Blue Eyes"

2011-12-09T14:30:00.001-05:00

Who doesn't love the smooth sounds of Kenny G? I know I don't. But somehow Destroyer implements those completely unhip smooth jazz sounds of the 80's into one of the best records of the year. "Kaputt" has the great video but the strongest track is "Blue Eyes," with its bluesy female back-up singer and it's jazzy sax, shit don't get much sexier than this.

"I thumb through the books on your shelves."

Best of 2011: Fucked Up - "The Other Shoe"

2011-12-07T12:41:00.001-05:00

Fucked Up is making some of the most melodic, forward-thinking punk rock I've ever heard. On "The Other Shoe", by fusing the angelic voice of Sandy Miranda with the guttural scream of Damian Abraham they somehow harmoniously unite the opposing worlds of pop and hardcore. The instrumentation steps beyond the distorted, three-power-chord progression it begins with, adding arpeggio guitar licks and volume effects, while the rhythm section continues to build the song to its mid-song climax. A top 5 track of the year for me; it's great to hear good hard rock still being created.

Best of 2011: Cities Aviv - "Coastin'"

2011-12-06T20:11:00.001-05:00

Echoes of all your favorite 90's hip-hop in Cities Aviv, but this isn't derivative by any stretch. A sample of Shirley Bassey's "Easy to Be Hard" sets you up and a 4/4 beat pulls you in. Remember when rappers rapped about things? Cities does. "Don't call it a comeback, just call it a grand entrance."

Best of 2011: Beach Fossils - "Face It"

2011-12-05T13:47:00.001-05:00

Absolutely gorgeous bass and clean-tone guitar melodies, perfectly blended male/female harmonies -- even without the presence of solid percussion, "Face It" is a top track of the year.

Best of 2011: Yuck - "Shook Down"

2011-12-02T14:21:00.001-05:00

Yuck dances around all your favorite 90's indie rock melodies while avoiding outright plagiarism. Sure, it's not the most original of material but they embrace the sound so wholeheartedly you can't help but be affected. They sway between soft ballads and noisy guitar distortion, both of which they do so well. It's so hard for me to pick a favorite but I'm going to go with "Shook Down", the song with their strongest melodies and harmonies.

The official video is too strange for the song, but check it out here if you want (NSFW penis/titty/vagina shots).

Best of 2011: Bon Iver - "Minnesota, WI"

2011-12-01T21:27:00.001-05:00

Congrats to Bon Iver for their song of the year Grammy nomination with "Holocene." The best song on the album though is Minnesaot, WI by a wide margin.

Best of 2011: Kavinsky - "Nightcall"

2011-11-30T16:13:00.001-05:00

Drive was a divisive film, but just about everyone found something to like on the soundtrack. Perfect mixes of 80's nostalgia and modern day electronica are what most of the songs consist of, the strongest of which is "Nightcall". Spooky synthesizers driven by a slow, plodding beat set the scene for a conversation between a man and a woman and their uncertain, mysterious relationship. After you've really listened you realize "Nightcall" is a Drive microcosm.

Best of 2011: Real Estate - "It's Real"

2011-11-29T18:53:00.001-05:00

Many of Real Estate's strongest moments are in their long instrumental interludes, when they allow their easy melodies to breathe and flow. But I can't help but feel the best track on Days is "It's Real", the most economic and radio-friendly song of the bunch. It maintains all of Real Estate's characteristics while adding increased accessibility. Though Days', an open and immediate record, wouldn't require one, "It's Real" turns out to be the groups' perfect single.

Best Tracks of 2011 Main Page

The Stills - Oceans Will Rise

2011-11-10T22:00:00.000-05:00

Release Date: 19.08.2008

★★★★★ Tracks:

Everything I Build

After Logic Will Break Your Heart The Stills switched gears with their next record. From what I remember Without Feathers was an homage to 70’s style arena rock, and I didn’t care for it much. The Stills latest record, Oceans Will Rise is a mix of both styles. Somewhat successful attempts at arena rock singles can be heard in “Being Here”, “I’m With You” and “Don’t Talk Down”; “Snakecharming the Masses” and “Everything I Build” bring Radiohead to mind; then there’s songs like “Snow in California” and “Hands on Fire” that follow The Stills founding blueprint. Some enjoyable songs here for heavy consumers of indie rock but surely nothing essential.

The Stills - Logic Will Break Your Heart

2011-11-08T15:54:00.003-05:00

Release Date: 21.10.2003

★★★★★ Tracks:

Changes Are No Good
Let’s Roll

The Stills first record sounds like The Strokes on an emo kick. Coincidentally I bought Logic WIll Break Your Heart during the same trip to the record store I bought Room on Fire, and I enjoyed the hell out of both of them some eight years ago. But while the second Strokes record has aged exceptionally well, the first Stills record has gone stale. Tim Fletcher sounds like he’s trying too hard. He writes gloomy, introspective lyrics; his defected, injured croon conjuring all your 80’s indie favorites (Morrissey, Robert Smith, Bernard Sumner) -- it’s hard to tell whether he takes himself too seriously or if he's on the conquest for groupies. Probably both. Just about anyone would hope being in a band would increase their chances of getting laid, but that should come naturally, I don't want to hear it in the music. Getting past Fletcher’s shortcomings will net you a few solid tracks though, my favorites being the depressing yet danceable “Changes Are No Good”, and the escapist “Let’s Roll”.

Stone Temple Pilots - Purple

2011-10-31T20:23:00.001-04:00

Release Date: 07.06.1994

★★★★★ Tracks:

Interstate Love Song
Big Empty

This disc still includes some shitty second-hand grunge, but it's hard to dislike STP's quality singles. The DeLeo brothers (guitarist and bassist) are responsible for most of the writing, as is the case with the two really fantastic tracks here, their first single "Big Empty" and third one, "Interstate Love Song". When "Big Empty" came out as a single promoting STP's upcoming record as well as The Crow soundtrack, a cult classic, it marked a strong shift towards pop rock for the Nirvana/Pearl Jam copycats; the jazzy bass line, 7th chords and acoustic slide guitar giving the group some much needed uniqueness.

A few months later came perhaps one of the most recognizable singles of the 90's, "Interstate Love Song". Encompassing classic Americana, Pop and only a slight tinge of Grunge, it's STP’s most timeless track, and whereas “Plush” is a guilty pleasure of mine forever trapped in the 90’s, “Interstate Love Song” will forever be a classic.

Stone Temple Pilots - Core

2011-10-26T22:02:00.003-04:00

Release Date: 29.09.1992

★★★★★ Tracks:

Plush

I remember a trip to the Keys with my parents and a big group of our friends. We all stayed in the same hotel, and during the evenings our folks would go out and get hammered while us kids were left to fend off boredom in the hotel rooms, with the eldest member acting as babysitter. All of us were sitting on the floor around the TV making fun of each other while intermittently checking in on MTV, waiting for our favorite music videos to play.

Jackpot.

“Plush” was manufactured rock’n’roll - built off trends and plagiarisms and insincerities - but it didn’t matter to this twelve year old. The hooks were on point and the video contained all the supercool imagery one kid could ask for. It was the summer of 1993 and the apex of grunge; the genre had me hook, line and sinker. My dad took a quick break from the drink a day or so later and took me to the record store, probably in hopes of a new record momentarily stopping my whining. But soon even I realized the rest of Core sucked; it would not see the Discman many times thereafter. “Plush” however would easily sit near the top of a list of my favorite guilty pleasures to this day.

The Stooges - Fun House

2011-10-25T22:06:00.001-04:00

Release Date: 07.07.1970

★★★★★ Tracks:

Down on the Streets
Loose

Punk rock’s foundations are agreed to have begun sometime in the late 1950’s. But in my mind the first band to embody punk rock as we now know it is The Stooges. And it all starts with Iggy. Here on Fun House he screams, squeals, barks, claps, burps, cajoles, and sings as abrasively as he can for thirty minutes, trying his damnedest to replicate the energy from his legendary stage persona. And what a stage persona. A man willing to do anything to rile the audience, he would roll in glass, throw up on stage, dance like a lunatic, and his most lasting antic, stage dive into the audience, being the first to attempt what is now a concert past time.

As much as I like punk rock though, The Stooges are a group I appreciate more than I rotate regularly. Fun House is solid but I think punk rock works best in compact doses. The repetitive melodies are effective and outstanding on the shorter songs here (“Down on the Street”, “Loose”) but wear out their welcome on anything +5 minutes (“Dirt”, “1970”, “Fun House”). Still, I love to hear the roots of the genre. Everyone from the Wire to Fugazi to Nirvana to NOFX owes to the music of the The Stooges. And just as Iggy created his persona out of his idols (Jim Morrison in particular), countless others would study and follow in Iggy’s steps. Shit, Ozzy should be sending him regular royalty checks.

Strikeforce Diablo - S/T EP

2011-10-18T16:18:00.000-04:00

Release Date: 1999

★★★★★ Tracks:

All Four, Pussies

More great hardcore from Gainesville. When will the hard stuff be hip enough to listen to again? Until then no one’s going to pursue it seriously. Age has made us soft. But no matter, while we wait for the music industry to grow a pair we’ve got four tracks and ten minutes worth of pure, power-chord driven, crash symbol pounding, say it aloud with me; “SCREAMO”. Now scream for joy as I post a free download link for the EP.

Download Free EP (Download winrar or unrar (Mac) if you don’t have an uncompressor)

I promise you this shit will rock your socks off, even those thick wool ones you’ve got ready for the winter. Twelve years after its release and this is still my go to record when I need that extra shot of adrenaline right to my veins. Seriously, queue this up on your headphones and take a stroll around town: NO ONE WILL FUCK WITH YOU.

The Strokes - Angles

2011-10-12T20:36:00.000-04:00

Release Date: 18.03.2011

★★★★★ Tracks:

Taken For a Fool
Life is Simple in the Moonlight

First Impressions of Earth was a spectacular letdown, but because the first two Strokes records are so great I'll continue to give them chances. Most of us were amped for the first single we would hear in five years, and in some ways it shares commonalities with our favorite Strokes songs; the distorted vocals are back, the chorus is great and Fab is drumming with the same purpose he always has. But, where at one point the intricate weaving of duel guitars was the group's strength, they've developed a habit of trying to fit too many ideas into 3-minute pop tracks. The riffs throughout the intro and verse for "Under Cover of Darkness" are so exaggerated they undermine the overall quality of what could be a great song.

A few weeks after hearing that first single, but before the release of Angles, the Strokes performed on Saturday Night Live. They opened with a performance of the single they had been pushing for the past month, but the highlight was their closer. Always saving the best for last, the Strokes played the album's last track, “Life is Simple in the Moonlight.” It's one of their most unique song since Is This It. A ballad by Strokes standards, the melody flows naturally, and the restrained solo by Valensi hearkens to the discipline they harnessed in their prime. It surprises me in the least it’s one of two Casablancas solo compositions on Angles.

So there was hope again.

Unfortunately, after countless times streaming Angles upon its release, nothing matched the quality of “Life is Simple in the Moonlight.” One of the few highlights is “Taken For a Fool,” the closest thing you’ll find to Is This It or Room on Fire. The Tom Petty influenced “Two Kinds of Happiness” is surprisingly enjoyable but loses focus during its course. And for the few solid songs there are equal duds. “You’re So Right” follows the awful “Juicebox” approach to mechanical rock’n’roll, “Games” is something between a New Order and Madonna mash-up, with awful execution, and then there’s “Metabolism”, some sort of waltzy-gothy-indie concoction. The rest fall into comfortable mediocrity

The Strokes have gathered a lot of great ideas for an EP’s worth of material, but when stretched unnaturally over ten songs, Angles is disjointed, lacking a clear trajectory. By choosing "Under Cover of Darkness" as the album's first single The Strokes can't say they didn't prepare us adequately.

The Strokes - Room on Fire

2011-10-06T22:16:00.000-04:00

Release Date: 28.10.2003

★★★★★ Tracks:

Most of Them

Room on Fire is the perfect follow-up record to Is This It as far as I’m concerned. Why fix something that ain’t broke? Fuck all that noise about evolving and maturing -- the second time around should simply be about the continuation of writing great songs. And we get another collection of brilliant guitar-rock here; some of the riffs are even more intricate than anything on Is This It. A perfect example is the album’s second single, “Reptilia,” and The Strokes highlight as much with long camera shots on the fret work by both Albert Hammond, Jr. and Nick Valensi in the music video.

A few of my favorite Strokes songs are here. “12:51" is where were first introduced to the keyboard-effect Valensi implements throughout Room on Fire. One of my favorite traits about Casablancas as a lyricist is the humor and sarcasm he often includes in his songs, but he might even be fooling himself when he sings “Never needed anybody / Never needed nobody” on “Thin Line Between Love and Hate,” even if the bright two-chord progression suggests happiness. “Automatic Stop” features Hammond, Jr. pitching into the songwriting process for the first time. And as with Is This It The Strokes save the best for last in “I Can’t Win,” a simple little track about accepting failure.

Mila Kunis and Eva Mendes either trying to get their careers off the ground or fans of good music. Or both.

The Strokes - Is This It

2011-10-04T13:47:00.001-04:00

Release Date: 30.07.2001

★★★★★ Tracks:

All of Them

In 2001 my record collection was running on fumes. Most of that great music I had collected from the 90’s had been destroyed or stolen. All that was left was a tattered lot of punk and emo records, most of which were perpetuating my frequent foul moods. The mainstream landscape, being inundated by shitty “bling”-rap, bubblegum pop and agro hard-rock, was even worse. MTV was dying, the radio had been dead for years -- my one true hobby was becoming warily dull.

But then, in one of MTV’s last redeeming moments, a buzzworthy video unlike anything they had played in over a decade was aired. The quintet, ragged and dirty and appearing on a stage resembling classic bandstands or Ed Sullivan shows, seem a bit aloof, a bit distracted, some might even say a bit lifeless. But they looked cool as shit. And once Julian Casablancas begins with his distorted voice and nonchalant cadence, you realized rock’n’roll hadn’t been this danceable in decades. Nodding your head as Albert Hammond, Jr. throws us back with a great solo and Casblancas comes in with one last chorus -- “Last Nite” was a reminder music is supposed to be fun. In songs like “The Modern Age” and “Someday” Casablancas tells tales of heartbreak similarly to most of the sappy shit I was listening to, but he does it with sincerity instead of superficial earnestness, attitude instead of whiny self-pity. Perhaps The Strokes' strongest trait, the guitar interplay between Hammond, Jr. and Nick Valensi isn't necessarily masterful, but it's incredibly melodic and expertly written, my favorites of which can be heard on “Soma” and “Take It or Leave It.”

A whole new realm of music opened for me with the release of Is This It. I rediscovered a lot of great 70’s rock they had borrowed from. It turned out music didn’t need constant drum beats, hard rock breakdowns, or electronic blips and beats after all. Although, as Chavez stated in his Albert Hammond, Jr. solo post, The Strokes aren’t one of the most original bands, they completely reinvigorated the sound they pay homage to. I hadn't had that much fun listening to a record since being a teenager. I think most everyone felt the same way, and perhaps it wasn’t pretentious himpsterism that set The Strokes and indie revivalism in New York City in motion, but a conjuring of excitement for good music again.

Easily one of the best records of the past twenty years.

(Guided by Voices appearance in this video for extra hip points)

Strung Out - Twisted by Design

2011-09-19T16:33:00.003-04:00

Release Date: 05.05.1998

★★★★★ Tracks:

Deville
Paperwalls

After Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues it would take two years for Strung Out to release another full length album, and I was about out the door and on my way to college when it arrived. The 90's punk rock I spent a lot of my teenage years listening to was left behind, but nostalgia still found me shelling out $15 for the occasional Fat Wreck-chords release. Twisted by Design further emancipates Strung Out from the Bad Religion/NOFX copycat moniker by the group's continuing slide towards pop-punk. That I still carry this with me some thirteen years later must say it still holds up decently, or maybe I'm just a punk-rocker at heart... as I type this in slacks and collared shirt on my lunch break. “Exhumation of Virginia Madison” and “Deville” are the best representations of the album as a whole, songs which might call to mind early Blink-182, but the highlight is “Paperwalls.” Take a song about relationship struggles and put it in the hands of sophomoric Fat Wreck-chords punk-rockers, you are begging for a piece of shit, but Strung Out defies the odds as they do with most of Twisted by Design.

Strung Out - Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues

2011-09-19T16:30:00.000-04:00

Release Date: 23.04.1996

★★★★★ Tracks:

Solitaire

I think Strung Out was my favorite band for about two weeks in my first year of high school. This was probably only because all of the other Fat Wreck-Chords bands like NOFX, Lagwagon, Face to Face, were claimed by my other friends, naturally forcing me to pick a group no one else had. Truth is Strung Out’s first album wasn’t very good, but when Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues came out the group added some pop sensibilities to the trashy, metallic punk-rock they ripped from their influences (Circle Jerks, Husker Du, Bad Religion). Poppier, catcher, crisper, the group that some ancient months ago was my favorite group had a legitmate record, at least as far as underground skate-punk was concerned. There are some songs that surprisingly hold up very well, one of which I still regularly stuff in my playlists -- “Solitaire,” I had always though to be a simple little love song, might actually be a somewhat cryptic account of first-hand struggles with drug addiction.

The Stryder - Jungle City Twitch

2011-09-06T21:44:00.001-04:00

Release Date: 23.07.2002

★★★★★ Tracks:
Summer Coat
This Is the Time

The Stryder was in heavy rotation when I first met my wife. And she must have found it more silly than stupid as I half-sang/half-rapped along to the ultra-cheesy lyrics sung on songs like “Crook” (Let me pat you down / Are you wired? / Don’t you make a sound / Were you hired?), or “Billy” (And you’ve been trying way too hard and got too much to prove / When all you gotta do is do the things you gotta do), or “Summer Coat” (It’s the first day of summer and I’ve already worn my winter coat) because she's still with me today. As I sit here now and play Jungle City Twitch I can’t help but feel embarrassed knowing the few readers here will laugh their asses off listening to this clip, all the while still helplessly digging the thrashy punk rock, amateur rap and boy band fusion The Stryder attempts to hilariously mash together.

Sublime - 40oz. to Freedom

2011-08-16T09:52:00.001-04:00

Release Date: 06.1992

★★★★★ Tracks:
5446 That’s My Number
Badfish
Let’s Go Get Stoned

As I stood there in the hallway, my Dixie cup full of beer freshly tapped and poured from the keg out back, I watched another twenty-something take at least a serving’s worth of beer through a funnel. “Badfish” began playing on Pandora and the room around me began to shift out of focus, as memories pushed themselves to the forefront. A friend's parents away for a weekend vacation leaving us teenagers alone for a few days; where the one of us that lost the rock-paper-scissors contest would have to go into the supermarket with our fake IDs and put the deposit down for a keg; where we would promptly invite our friends over and they would invite their friends over and they would invite their friends over; bong rips by the pool, keg-stands in the kitchen, all bathrooms occupied by porcelain-hugging fuck-ups, and then someone inevitably yelling from out front “5-0!”

“Ain’t got not time to get old
Lord knows I’m weak
Won’t somebody get me off of this reef”

“Hey...hey...hey! ...The keg is tapped."

I’m transported back to the hallway I was standing in. People are starting to pass out. The keg’s tapped. The party’s over.

"White Castle?" he continues.

I’m thirty now, not that invincible seventeen year old I used to be. It was fun while it lasted, but it’s just not quite the same. Neither is Sublime. Every now and then though, when the setting’s just right, “Badfish” sounds like one of the best fucking songs to have ever passed through those speakers.

"Sure."

Sunny Day Real Estate - The Rising Tide

2011-08-14T14:18:00.003-04:00

Release Date: 20.6.2000

Well, Jeremy Enigk’s conversion to Chirstianity was no secret during the making of LP2, and based upon the cover for The Rising Tide his transformation to half-man/half-angel is well underway. Enigk's vocals even sound forcefully angelic. Hopefully he's found peace of mind, but the new SDRE sound is too holy for my tastes.

Sunny Day Real Estate - The Pink Album

2011-08-09T11:23:00.003-04:00

Release Date: 7.11.1995

★★★★★ Tracks:
Theo B
Red Elephant
8

LP2, The Pink Album, Self Titled, whatever the fuck you want to call it is the SDRE album I still come back to often. I know Diary is better written and more unique, in fact LP2 just sounds like a continuation or a B-sides to that album. But some of the tunes here are catchier than most of Diary. It's also not quite as lengthy as its predecessor, which often wears out its welcome with a 53 minute run time.

“Theo B” has a nice guitar jingle with an up-tempo rhythm that drops into the signature SDRE distorted-octave chorus. “Red Elephant” sounds like something U2 might have come up with if they rocked a little harder. “5/4” is named after its tempo, a highly difficult time signature to write a pop song in, but SDRE is up to the task. Perhaps my favorite track to ever be produced by the group is “8,” which was cut originally for a 7” but beefed up and put on LP2. It takes a while to start, with Jeremy Enigk singing quietly to a slow strummed guitar, but blows up into soaring octaves and a great swing beat before settling into those great palm muted power chords I can never get enough of.

The band was in heavy conflict during the recording of LP2 and would disband soon afterwards. Rumor has it the band was fed up with Enigk’s born-again Christianity and his increasing artistic dominance over the band’s direction. They would never match the quality of these two records when they made their comeback a few years later.

Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary

2011-08-08T22:01:00.000-04:00

Release Date: 10.5.1994

★★★★★ Tracks:
Seven
In Circles
47
48

My grandfather passed away while I was in my junior year of high school. My family drove up from Florida to attend the funeral, but not before I picked up a bag of shwag for the few boring, dreary nights I’d be spending at Nana’s house. On one of the rare chances my dad and I were able to peel away from the family, we did one of the few things we naturally enjoyed together, which was taking trips to the record store. It was on this trip that I bought two completely dissimilar records, Sublime’s 40 oz. to Freedom and Sunny Day Real Estate’s Diary. At night when everyone would go to sleep, I’d head out to my grandmother’s huge yard, smoke a bowl, come back in and put my headphones on as loud as I could take. I didn’t know my grandfather all that well but it was still a somber moment, and Diary fit the mood perfectly.

When I got back to FL I played Sunny Day more and more. At the time, when most of what I was listening to was punk and rap, Sunny Day’s instrumentation made me think about lead guitar in a different way. Not that it had never been done before, but Sunny Day’s left and right split of both guitars allows for constant leads and intricate weaving of tone. The quiet/loud/quiet dynamic of the 90’s is further built upon as well. William Goldsmith, bored by the frequent monotony of rock/pop percussion, attacks the drums with a barrage of constant snare hits and performs fills and rolls at any moment’s notice. Not to be outdone by the drumming and dueling guitars, the bass is highly technical, and, with the guitars dueling leads, often carries the melody exclusively.

Diary isn’t on regular rotation like it once was. It’s tone, mostly dreary and slow in tempo, make it a record for a specific mood, or maybe it just always reminds me of when I bought it. It’s a highly influential record though, and phenomenally performed. The two stand-outs tracks here are some of the strongest rock cuts to come out of the 90’s. Diary’s opener, “Seven,” is the hardest and most upbeat of the lot, where the drum attack of the intro and transitions from verse to chorus are its highlight (the song is cut short due to MTV’s wishes of bands sticking as closely to a 3:00 run time as possible, the full track clocks in at 4:45).

The best track however resides near the end of the collection, “48” attempts to take the quiet/loud/quiet approach to new extremes, with a serene, almost classical sounding melody during the verse giving way to blaring, distorted octaves as Jeremy Enigk screams at the top of his lungs.

Surfer Blood - Astro Coast

2011-08-03T16:37:00.004-04:00

Release Date: 19.1.2010

★★★★★ Tracks:
Harmonix

Surf rock made a big comeback a few years ago, weaving its way into the indie arena, with California up-and-comers (Girls, Best Coast, Wavves) wanting to incorporate the sounds of the most renowned of California groups. Surfer Blood hails from the East Coast in Florida, where there’s more humid rain than ocean breeze and the waves aren’t all that great, but they wanted in on the beach party too. Astro Coast didn’t take much time to warm up to initially. “Floating Vibes” and “Swim” are the catchiest of tunes, mixing early 2000s indie rock (The Shins, The Strokes) with their surf influences. “Harmonix” is a personal favorite, its name coming from the harmonic sound one can make by just barely placing a finger on a string above a fret, and it’s those harmonic notes the song is built off of.

The bad news is I completely forgot about this record weeks after hearing it. It doesnt have much staying power, and I've now grown bored by a lot of the songs I liked initially. I’ll keep a couple of the stand-outs and most likely scrap the rest. But unfortunately for my home state, looks like California wins again.

Syd Barrett - The Madcap Laughs

2011-07-29T13:37:00.001-04:00

Release Date: 3.1.1970

★★★★★ Tracks:
Terrapin
Love You
Dark Globe
Here I Go
Octopus

Syd Barrett felt like he might just be one bad trip away. While Pink Floyd was the soundtrack to the fun, hallucinogenic trips of my high school days, Syd represents what happens after you indulge too much. Paranoid, delusional trips that you can’t escape, engulfing six or more hours of your life at a time. Things you never even thought might bother you begin to itch and claw at your mind, leaving you paralyzed and helpless. Syd knows all about it, but unlike most of us who stay away from the stuff after a bad trip or two, he kept at it, damaging his already unstable psyche stemming from his adolescence. And it’s no wonder Pink Floyd was so worried about Syd’s decaying frame of mine and its effects on the band, he was the best songwriter the group produced to this day.

The Madcap Laughs is a difficult and depressing record, but it shines brilliantly. Even the more upbeat tracks have an undertone of deep isolation and paranoia. “Here I Go” is a little swing track which is somehow eerily up-tempo, almost as if the notes being played by the guitar are hiding an undercurrent of madness. Syd Barrett is heartbroken by a girl he likes who doesn't like his songs, preferring the big band he was once in. On “Love You” Syd Barrett uses strange and incoherent wordplay mixed with a bizarre, carnival-like piano line to capture his feelings for a woman.

For the most part though Syd plays slow, wandering guitar lines and sings in suggesting riddles, as his melancholy songwriting bleeds out unto the microphone capturing his loneliness in space and time. “Dark Globe” is especially heartbreaking as Syd pleads, “wouldn’t you miss me at all!” to a successful band that no longer needs him. But the best song just might be the opening track, as Barrett wittingly sings of two fish in love.

Taking Back Sunday - Where You Want to Be

2011-07-19T11:45:00.005-04:00

Release Date: 26.3.2002

★★★★★ Tracks:
Set Phasers to Stun
A Decade Under the Influence

I remember buying Where You Want to Be at Best Buy in the $9.99 section soon after it came out. It hit #3 on the Billboard charts in the first week, signifying emo’s takeover of the mainstream, an unthinkable feat to me at the time. But with the look of all these sensitive gloom-rockers, their black-painted nails, black-bobbed haircuts and black eyeliner, they were essentially the natural next step in manufactured boy bands. I always dug this type of music though, it’s typically not your typical 3-chord 4/4 rock in a major scale, and it’s refreshing to me to hear groups try and break out of the status quo. But then emo turned itself into the status quo of the early 2000s, churning out countless dopey teen rockers taking themselves entirely too seriously; rock’n’roll is supposed to be fun after all. And so a trend being a trend, MTV latched on and that marked the death knell of the ‘M’ ever being associated with the ‘TV.’

The first couple of tracks on Where You Want to Be I can’t help but still like. I never make it through the entire album though, and I’d rather disassociate the music from the images. However that would be untruthful. They are who they are.

Taking Back Sunday - Tell Your Friends

2011-07-11T14:21:00.004-04:00

Release Date: 26.3.2002

★★★★★ Tracks:
Cute Without the ‘E’
Timberwolves at New Jersey

Third-wave emo; when the more pop-oriented singing and songwriting of groups like Jimmy Eat World and Saves the Day were combined with the screaming hardcore of Refused or Shai Hulud. It's an attempt at a fresher and more economical take on the downtrodden genre. Resonant, reverby clean tone abruptly gives way to distorted power chords and palm muting on most everything here, the quiet/loud dynamic established in the 90’s very much at play. I’ve grown out of most of it but loud music is harder and harder to come by these days. Taking Back Sunday, their cutesy teenage lyrics aside (“Everything I know about breaking hearts / I learned from you / It’s true” is one of the many gems), are up to the task, and Tell Your Friends has a couple of great songs, although I cant help but cringe to videos like this.

Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food

2011-07-06T11:30:00.001-04:00

Release Date: 21.7.1978

★★★★★ Tracks:
Thank You for Sending Me an Angel
With Our Love
The Good Thing
Artists Only
Take Me to the River

More Songs About Buildings and Food is easily my favorite ‘Heads record. The group is still in its rock’n’roll phase, but their sound is greatly enhanced with Brian Eno at the helm for the first time in what would prove to be a long, fruitful relationship between band and producer. Eno, still very early in his musical career, and riding the success in helping to shape the sounds of Bowie’s “Berlin Trilogy,” had a keen ear for the direction in which the ‘Heads were attempting to take their music. On Buildings and Food he doesn’t want to fiddle much with the sound but rather tinker with the way it comes to your speakers. He tightens up their studio sessions and therefore the quality of the songs themselves, he gives the guitars a bit of a mechanical feel, and allows the spastic, nervous energy the band creates to seep through the recording. The results are fantastic; 11 of the weirdest, grooviest tracks to come out of the 70’s. “Thank You For Sending Me an Angel” is the perfect opener, but “With Our Love” is the ‘Heads’s mission statement; a computerized, rinky-dink guitar charges ahead while David Byrne neurotically sings of the strange complexities of relationships between male and female.

The album culminates in what might be the best track of the album, a cover of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River.” The Talking Heads slow it down, strip it of its brass section, add a little synth, and Byrne adds his eccentricities to perfection. Alongside "Remain in Light" and "Burning Down the House," "Take Me to the River" would end up being one of the most recognizable songs the 'Heads ever produced.

Talking Heads - '77

2011-06-24T17:19:00.004-04:00

Release Date: 16.9.1977

★★★★★ Tracks:
Uh-oh, Love Comes to Town
New Feeling
The Book I Read
Psycho Killer

As creative as the Talking Head’s were when they started to implement afrofunk on Fear of Music and Remain in Light, I enjoy their earlier work a lot more, when they were a more straightforward rock’n’roll group. But even in the beginning I imagine the 'Heads are probably one of the first bands to be classified as ‘art rock.' While the label has always sounded rather pretentious, it just seems to make sense when identifying groups that write cerebral and strange lyrics or compose more complex instrumentation thank your average pop/rock outfit, or in the case of the 'Heads, both. And really, David Byrne seems like a pretty pretentious guy anyways. But as evidenced by ’77, the entire record being written by Byrne, he backs that arrogance up with some of the most unique music of the late 70's and early 80's.

The guitar work here is elaborate, and implements a bit of the funk they would further incorporate a few years later. Byrne talks a bit about the government (“Some civil servants are just like my family” in “Don’t Worry About the Government”) about every day problems (“they say compassion is a virtue / But I don’t have the time” on “No Compassion”), about how great he is (“I’m a know it all / I’m the smartest man around” on “Uh-oh, Love Comes to Town”), but one of the odd, most reoccurring themes is his fascination with social politics between men and women (“Girls ask and I define decision / Boys ask and I describe their function” on “Tentative Decisions”), and all of these lyrics further the image of the frontman as a rather distraught weirdo; the anxious, rambling voice the sound of a man who should be medicated. His neuroses are our gain though. And who doesn’t love to give it their all when singing “Psycho Killer” on Rock Band?

Talking Heads - Remain in Light

2011-06-16T14:38:00.010-04:00

Release Date: 08.10.1980

★★★★★ Tracks:
Crosseyed and Painless
The Great Curve
Once in a Lifetime

When I play a Talking Heads record I inevitably think about how awesome it would have been to have been around during the CBGB heydays of the late 70’s. It was probably an intimidating scene, with a crowd made up mostly of social outcasts hoping to catch a glimpse of punk rock pioneers like the Ramones or Television or Patti Smith or Blondie (wow). With their business-casual attire and pretentious, artsy demeanor, the Heads must have been the oddballs of the bunch. They probably fit in much better with the white-collared Manhattanites surrounding them. Furthering the image, David Byrne’s nervous, edgy, even chaotic, vocal style makes him sound incredibly smart, but incredibly strange, as if his brain holds more information than one brain can capably handle. He sounds like what I imagine the late 70’s and early 80’s represented in general; it was the dawn of sensory overload. And while most of the CBGB crew were busy revolting against the changing times, the Heads and the music they created appeared to embrace the epoch of green-screened computers, fast-paced financial activity on Wall Street, and car-polluted freeways surrounding it. Perhaps though, the group was simply approaching the revolt in a different manner.

The first Heads song I heard was “Once in a Lifetime.” The video, one that got heavy MTV circulation even into the late 80’s, in a lot of ways introduces the audience to what the band is all about: the Heads’ frontman, a well-dressed David Byrne massaging his ego and exercising his creative control over the band, is the only member of the group to appear; it uses cutting edge analog and video effects for the time; the music is rhythmic and percussive but monotonous in melody; and Byrne’s vocals sound like an anxious stream of consciousness, a consciousness perplexed by the speed of which life can pass one by.

Ironically Remain in Light wasn’t recorded in the urban sprawls of America, but on the tropical shores of the Bahamas. Married and gaining success from their music, drummer, Chris Frantz, and bassist, Tina Weymouth, purchased an apartment in Nassau, where they quickly gained a fascination for Caribbean and African music. Byrne came down to visit the band soon after the purchase and they immediately began working on their next album, with the idea of heavily incorporating Afro beats, polyrhythmics, and reggae into the record. The finishing product remains true to the process. Every song here is uninflected in melodic structure, as the chord progressions never change throughout each song, but the rhythms are deep in multilayered percussion, and the songs build in strength as more instruments are gradually layered on top of one another. Phenom producer Brian Eno has a lot to do with this, as they essentially used a copy+paste method of recording loops and layers from the band's long studio jam sessions, but remember, this was before we had the convenience of digital music editors. A new method of recording music had been born and no one knew it yet. Always inspired by soul, the Talking Heads were now featuring the building blocks to rap and hip-hop in their music, and even though it took a trip to the Bahamas to inspire the group’s new approach, back in their hometown of New York City hip hop was already beginning to thrive. Perhaps some of this is pure coincidence, but Remain in Light nonetheless showcases how well their music epitomized the time.

The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt

2011-06-10T11:52:00.002-04:00

Release Date: 13.04.2010

★★★★★ Tracks:
The Wild Hunt
Burden of Tomorrow
You're Going Back

“Aww Xavier's on the border of the sun
Swings on the chambers of your guns
And tries to shoot the chord and light the path

Aww but hell I'm just a blind man on the plains
I drink my water when it rains
And live by chance among the lightning strikes”

I don’t know what the hell The Tallest Man On Earth is singing about most the time, maybe I’m just not paying enough attention or maybe I’m too wrapped up in the music. It doesn't matter though, The Wild Hunt perks my ears up every time it sets in motion; Kristian Matsson has quite the gift for the 6-string, and his biting voice, rambling lyrics and bare bones instrumentation bring to mind the days of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, the introspective less preachy version of his many personalities. The album’s run time is just fine but, as regular readers might know by now, I can get burnt out quickly by percussion-less music, even with guitar virtuosity as fine as this. Still, a lot of these songs simply cannot be discounted, most notably; “The Wild Hunt,” “Burden of Tomorrow,” and “You’re Going Back.”

(Best audience still shot ever?)

Tegan and Sara - Various

2011-06-09T12:47:00.006-04:00

★★★★★ Tracks:
My Number
Walking With a Ghost

Soon after college I ended up with a desk job for a large accounting firm. It was a low-level department filled with tons of recent college graduates like myself, making for the most fun and fucked up work environment I will most likely ever be a part of. Endless hours of goofing off in the mail room ensued, and in that mail room we would blare our favorite tunes; anything from Wu-Tang to Garth Brooks on the domestic front and 3 Canal to Ninet Tayeb from the international scene. When management realized shit was getting out of hand, we were dispersed about the office like disciplined first graders in order to settle things down, but that didn’t stop us from using the inter-office instant messaging system to send mp3 files back and forth to one another. It was at this time that one of my closest musical counterparts introduced me to the first Tegan and Sara track I would ever hear. “My Number” has a new wavish, folksy sound hearkening to those singles from the 90’s femme movement (Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco, etc). If I make out the lyrics correctly it sounds like Tegan is recounting her issues with identity and sexuality, which makes the song even more interesting knowing what we now know of her.

When I told my friend I had played the shit out of that track, she sent me "Walking With a Ghost" next. In this song, it was obvious the duo had evolved, borrowing heavily from those punk and garage records they must've been collecting over the past few years. Instead of leaning entirely on acoustics and string accompaniments they were blaring electric guitars with distortion while pushing the pitch of their voices to newly grating levels. They began to harness their originality though, and “Walking With a Ghost” became the blueprint for a lot of the group’s later work. Not long afterwards the White Stripes would cover it for an EP. Tegan and Sara are often branded as The Jonas Brothers for the indie teen, and the nod by such a respected rock'n'roll group gave the duo some much needed musical credibility. And as I listen to both tracks back to back a few times over, Jack White’s version can’t touch the original.

Tegan and Sara - The Con

2011-05-31T11:55:00.001-04:00

Release Date: 24.7.2007

★★★★★ Tracks:
The Con
Knife Going In
Back in Your Head
Burn Your Life Down

My wife: “Turn that down! Our neighbors are going to think we’re lesbians...”

Me: “Come on, it’s not that bad,” just as Tegan sings, “I felt you in my legs / Before I ever saw you.”

...Alright, she has a point.

Tegan and Sara - Back In Your Head (Live Conan O'Brien 2007)

Tegan and Sara - Sainthood

2011-05-22T21:29:00.009-04:00

Release Date: 27.10.2010

★★★★★ Tracks:
Don’t Rush
Hell
Alligator
Paperback Head
The Ocean

Most anyone who enjoys Tegan and Sara will take a defensive stance when speaking of them, a stance that only arises in the case of guilty pleasures. Just look at that album cover ... I understand the criticism to their perceived packaged hipsterism, the gimmicky imagery of are they lesbians / are they twins / are they lovers / maybe all three? But when I play a track all of that never comes to mind because they craft such great pop rock. They remind me of Fleetwood Mac or Tom Petty for modern day indie enthusiasts; taking bits and pieces of all that great rock over the past 25 years and impressively compartmentalizing it. As well as its infectious nature, the duo have incredible talent for building pop songs from the bottom up, as they write all the material themselves.

I’m starting with their latest release because it’s not only their best work yet, but it also garners the lowest “cheese factor” of the bunch. As these twin siblings have grown and matured before our eyes so has their music. Tegan and Sara pull from all of their influences this time around; the album’s named after a Leonard Cohen lyric (“Came So Far For Beauty), “Alligator” sounds like a Madonna throwback, “The Ocean’s” fast tempo and open-stringed strumming brings Jimmy Eat World to mind, on “Hell,” one of the first tracks to have ever been co-written by both sisters, they show how easily power-chord driven punk rock comes to them, and their increasing infatuation with 80’s new wave is harnessed in songs “Don’t Rush,” “The Cure,” “Arrow,” and “Paperback Head.” Chris Walla of Death Cab fame produces T&S for the second time and he markedly improves the recording quality here, everything sounds crisp, with one of the most impressive aspects being the top-notch, forceful drumming and percussion -- the aspect of the music which really carries these songs forward.

Tegan and Sara - Hell

And sure, there is still plenty that could likely be heard backing the credits to a romantic comedy, or some awfully awkward scene to one of those WB shows my wife might or might not watch; in “On Directing,” even Sara herself realizes her sugar-coated lyricism (“Go steady with me / I know it turns you off when I / I get talking like a teen.”) can induce dry heaves. In the end though I just can’t ever seem to let T&S’s immaturity get to me because the hooks are so fucking good. They'll most likely always write with naive and sometimes immature sincerity, and combined with those abrasive tomboyish voices, the unamused will quickly grow disinterested. But 2009’s Sainthood brought Tegan and Sara from oft-played guilty pleasure to a group producing one of my favorite records of 2009.

Television - Marquee Moon

2011-05-11T11:50:00.002-04:00

Release Date: February 8, 1977

★★★★★ Tracks:
See No Evil
Venus
Friction
Prove It

They were mainstays at CBGB during its heyday in the late 70's, that was about all I knew of Television before their free Central Park show a few years ago. My wife and I walked in a bit late, bought our $12 beers, and watched them play what I now know is the title track to Marquee Moon. The song runs over ten minutes long, with an instrumental interlude spanning the majority of its playtime. They embellished on it live, and what felt like fifteen minutes in I was already finding myself pretty damn bored by the whole thing. It sounded like a garagey version of Phish, a sort of meandering piece of music that never found the hook it seemed to be searching for. Maybe everyone was tranced out or I missed the mushroom party, but the crowd appeared lifeless. The band lacked energy or any sort of stage presence, and at the time I thought these bros from the 70’s just didn't have much steam left in them. But maybe they were playing with heavy hearts. We stayed for a few more tracks and left disappointed.

Undeterred, I bought a copy of Marquee Moon a few weeks after the show. It floored me how immediate and infectious it was. About half way through a live performance I didn't understand the appeal but the opening riff to "See No Evil" left me wearing an unshakable grin. What phenomenal guitar play. I immediately thought of one of my favorite albums, The Strokes’ Is This It (insert typical hipster joke here); I could see Casablancas and Hammond, Jr. sitting around some years ago, picking apart the guitar licks on Marquee Moon while gathering ideas for the dynamic guitar interplay on their debut album some 25 years later. Television uses a dual left/right guitar approach (and as it is with most complex guitar bands, mono is not a good option when playing this record), sometimes layering as many as four and five guitars on to a track at once. Songs like “Venus” and “Friction” have guitar leads that last their entire lengths, mixing in multiple and frequent guitar solos. All too often the solo will sound like such a pretentious piece of shit in rock’n’roll music, but Television uses precision, allowing the solo to improve the overall structure of the song while simultaneously attacking its conventionalism, and they do so with confidence, not arrogance.

I admit I still skip over the sprawling “Marquee Moon” most times through, but damn if their live show didn’t give me a false impression, because Marquee Moon is rock'n'roll guitar virtuosity at its finest.

Texas is the Reason - Do You Know Who You Are?

2011-04-28T10:17:00.009-04:00

Release Date: April 30,, 1996

★★★★★ Tracks:
Back and to the Left

Along with the likes of Sunny Day Real Estate, The Promise Ring, and Jawbreaker, Texas is the Reason are co-founders of a brand of rock that would eventually become synonymous with edgy black hair, tight pants, Rivers Cuomo glasses, and overly-sensitive douchebaggery. But unlike the Saves the Days and Jimmy Eat Worlds of the emo universe, Texas is the Reason has always been one of the more respectable groups to like from the genre. While that might not be saying much due to emo's stigma, Texas is the Reason is without a doubt a very influential group. They combined power-pop, punk rock, and post-hardcore with mid-song tempo changes, drop-D tunings, monster breakdowns, and a more earnest brand of vocals and lyricism than your typical rock band would allow. Followers (mostly forgettable) from Sparta to Taking Back Sunday to most the Deep Elm and Revelation Records bands that would follow would point back to groups like Texas as foundations for their music.

Oddly enough, out of the countless emo bands I listened to throughout the course of the mid-to-late 90’s, Texas is the Reason is a group I never got in to all that much. Most of my friends did, and I know all about them. There isn’t any particular reason for my lack of fandom other than that I never owned their full-length album. As I listen to these somewhat familiar tunes now, there are a few that definitely catch my ear. "Johnny on the Spot" is a rollicking opener, setting the tone for the rest of the record, and "Back and to the Left" is a phenomenal hard rock anthem. Texas is at their best when they rock the fast-tempoed power chord jams, mixing distorted octaves and off-kilter drum beats. The downfall for most will be Garret Klahn's vocals, as his somewhat high-pitched yelp has me thinking Texas would have been better with with a different frontman as well. And while I do enjoy most of these songs, the slower, more "emo" tracks do feel dated at this point, and overall it feels like I missed the Texas boat by about fifteen years; it might be too late for me to jump on board now.

Thao with the Get Down Stay Down - We Brave Bee Stings and All

2011-04-22T16:11:00.003-04:00

Release Date: January 29, 2008

★★★★★ Tracks:
Swimming Pools
Geography

Cannonballs into swimming pools. Licks of ice cream. Big kid tables. Bee stings. Bike riding adventures with friends. When Thao isn’t complaining of being dumped, she’s singing of childhood nostalgia. She compliments those lyrics with a high-pitched, somewhat off-key vocal style, further embedding those school day images in to your head as you listen. Thao’s guitar skills are by no means childish though; she writes chord progressions that sound like they come from a blues and jazz aficionado, and combines those chords with intricate finger picking, as her band expertly crafts leads and rhythms to accompany the acoustic melodies. Electric guitars, brass, percussion, bass, and banjos can all be heard here, sometimes in the span of one song. The contrasting mix of childish lyricism and masterful musicianship results in to a calculated playfulness, and it gives Thao her distinction amongst the plethora of other modern day folk-rocekrs. I played the shit out of We Brave Bee Stings and All in the Spring of ‘08, but after a few play-thrus three years later, it’s lost a bit of its luster. Thao’s voice can teeter on annoying occasionally, and her lyrics are a little too syrupy to digest in large doses. Still, there are a couple of tracks I’ll always come back to; the bluegrassy “Swimming Pools” is the highlight but “Geography” is a close second, where a beautiful melody accompanies lyrics focusing on emotional distance.

Them

2011-04-18T10:29:00.004-04:00

Release Date: 1964

★★★★★ Tracks:
Baby, Please Don’t Go
Gloria

Remember Good Morning, Vietnam? My dad loved that flick. And soon after he saw it for the first time he went out and grabbed the soundtrack, proceeding to play it at almost every party my folks threw through the late 80’s and early 90’s. In the film, Robin Williams portrays Adrian Cronauer, an outspoken, controversial DJ for an Americanized Vietnam radio channel during the war. Some of his radio bits are included on the soundtrack, and they can be just as grating as you’d expect large doses of Robin Williams to be, but the songs included are fantastic. A lot of the artists you know; The Beach Boys, James Brown, The Supremes, Louie Armstrong, but there are a few buried treasures here as well, my favorite of which being from a group called Them.

“Baby, Please Don’t Go” by Them always reminded me of swampy roots rockers like Creedence Clearwater Revival or Gram Parsons, and discovering some years later one of the most famous rock signers of all time, Van Morrison, fronted the group was surprising. But although their stomping grounds are across the pond in Belfast, Ireland, Them is indeed rooted in American, bluesy rock’n’roll and R&B. And it was this group that would launch Van Morrison’s resilient career, as “Brown Eyed Girl” would be released just two years later. I haven’t had a chance to grab an album’s worth of material from Them, but "Gloria," the B-side to “Baby, Please Don’t Go” is another killer track. Grounded in garage and blues, one of the more interesting aspects of the song is its use of duel drum tracks, an almost unprecedented recording practice in the studio to this day. I can put both of these songs on repeat for an hour and not get tired of them.

Thom Yorke - The Eraser

2011-04-07T12:22:00.001-04:00

Release Date: July 10, 2006

★★★★★ Tracks:
Black Swan

I’ll leave the Radiohead chat for the Radiohead post, but in a few words, while the group has made a ton of truly groundbreaking music, I don’t find most of their post-OK Computer albums to be all that listenable. Thom Yorke’s solo album turns out to be no different. The Eraser was sent to me by your typical Radiohead superfan, a good friend who told me I needed to give “Black Swan” and “Harrowdown Hill” a listen. “Harrowdown Hill” is decent and “Black Swan” is spectacular, the busiest track of the bunch with a simple, effective chorus (“This is fucked up / Fucked up”). But overall, just as I lose interest quickly with most of Radiohead’s electronic stuff, my attention wavers even more so here on The Eraser. Yorke’s voice is great as always but the songwriting isn’t immersive enough to distract me from the lack of instrumentation. My favorite Radiohead side project will most likely always be Jonny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood. That shit is genius.

Three Mile Pilot - The Inevitable Past is the Future Forgotten

2011-04-01T10:21:00.006-04:00

Release Date: September 28, 2010

★★★★★ Tracks:
Grey Clouds

I have no idea when or why I downloaded Three Mile Pilot. When I saw it was next in line on my mp3 player I mouthed to myself, “who the hell are they?” My first play through I was immediately reminded of the low-key, indie prog-rock group Pinback. So much so that I was pretty certain I’d find one of its members listed as a collaborator when I wikied them. Sure enough bassist/singer, Zach Smith, and drummer, Tom Zinser, are both members of, as I am now informed they are often referred to, 3MP. What was surprising was to find out 3MP have been recording music for nearly twenty years, and Pinback wasn't Zach Smith's primary group to begin with. The Inevitable Past is the Future Forgotten sounds a lot like Pinback though, with a few more synthy sci-fi tones and a few less progressive influences incorporated in to their music. The album as a whole isn’t compelling enough to come back to often, but I really dig “Grey Clouds,” a mellow jam that brings to mind those awe-inspiring feelings I used to have as a kid from star gazing, and the fantasies of space travel that would always ensue. The album cover suggests I am not alone.

“It’s a far off dream...”

Tim Kasher - The Game of Monogamy

2011-03-30T16:14:00.015-04:00

Release Date: October 5, 2010

★★★★★ Tracks:
Cold Love

Tim Kasher is partially, if not mostly, responsible for one of my favorite all time albums in Cursive’s Domestica. I’ve followed his career over the span of Cursive’s near twenty years, his side project with The Good Life, and now his solo work, and I’ll continue to do so hoping he catches lightning in a bottle again someday. However over the past few records Kasher’s obsession with his deficiencies in his love life and the monotony of monogamy have grown stale, and things are no different here on his first solo record, The Game of Monogamy. Most of what’s included is too heavy on sappy dissatisfaction and too light on hooks. Songs like “A Grown Man,” “Strays” and “There Must Be Something I’ve Lost” revolve around the growing boredom Kasher experiences in his relationship(s) to very minimal instrumentation. Kasher’s voice and delivery have always been interesting, but they aren’t suited for such sparse backgrounds, and with nominal distractions from his contrived sincerity we've been force fed for the better part of a decade, these songs have me pressing skip every time.

The uptempo tracks are an improvement. And when Tim steps aside and lets the guitars and brass section carry songs forward, as on “I’m Afraid I’m Gonna Die Here” and “Bad, Bad Dreams,” the tragedy in Kasher’s words and the upbeat nature of the music contrast effectively. The best example of this is “Cold Love,” the album’s single and video featuring Molly Parker of Deadwood fame. “Cold Love” is one of the louder tracks and it's obvious this is where Kasher is most comfortable; when he's mixing solid rock hooks with his signature cynical lyricism (“Maybe we got tired of the same old dessert / We grew up in a world of thirty-one flavors / Maybe we're just tired of this vanilla existence”), glimpses of how promising the album might have been had it stayed away from the heavy-hearted ballads are apparent.

(This is a great video)

Time Spent Driving

2011-03-25T14:31:00.001-04:00

Yea, um … this is embarrassing. Lyrics like “And if I know one thing / No matter how hard I sing / You just won’t hear me / Because right now you couldn’t be much more near me” or, “If I die tonight / Will your memories of me / Just fade” or, “It’s alright if you got me wrong / There’s no way I’m giving up / Maybe it’s right / Or maybe it’s wrong and you just don’t see it” were passable at twenty years old, but at thirty, they’re just laughable. These days anytime a Time Spent Driving track comes up on shuffle healthy doses of cringes and facepalms ensue. While I’ll always have a soft spot for pop-punk and post-hardcore, I can’t get past how ashamed I feel that I ever connected with Jon Cattivera’s somber lyrics and crooning vocals. If I could sit down and share a beer with myself ten years ago, this is what I'd tell him: “Grow the fuck up, grow a pair, and quit being such a self-loathing douche. Oh, and ask that cool Amira girl out already.” But once the emo enters your heart it can never fully leave you. And so, I will continue to allow “Rain on Sundays” and “Thin Like Paper” the rare shuffle appearance, and continue to allow myself to feel like a sensitive little girl each time one of them plays.

Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

2011-03-23T11:57:00.006-04:00

Release Date: March 9, 2010

What do you get when you mix the sound and spirit of punk rock, the voice of Conor Oberst, and a fascination with the U.S. Civil War? Titus Andronicus’s new record of course. The group’s sprawling, hour long, semi-concept album, The Monitor, dropped about a year ago to rave reviews, and sounded intriguing enough to download. On first play I'm introduced with a speech by Abraham Lincoln, which promptly leads in to a fast-paced punk anthem where Patrick Stickles quiveringly sings of his love/hate relationship with New Jersey. It was promising and exciting initially, but after its first verse as Sickles plays a pedestrian guitar solo for the better part of a minute, the charm begins to dissipate -- and by the time this simple little track plateaus the seven minute mark I’ve completely lost interest. The second song, “Titus Andronicus Forever,” is much shorter but no less musically derivative with its simple C, F, G power chord variation, as the band sings in anthem, "the enemy is everywhere!" After multiple listens I haven't found much of anything to latch on to. Every song follows in similar formation; distorted I IV V or I vi IV V chord progressions (sometimes capoed for tonal variation) that stay long past their welcome (the last song, “The Battle of Hampton Roads” clocks in at a whopping fourteen minutes). Stickles focuses mostly on his down and out ways -- nights filled with shitty beer and shittier pubs. The songs are jumbled up with random civil war quotes, references and recordings, apparently giving the band its distinct originality.

The way in which one would most likely enjoy Titus Andronicus is by commiserating with the lovable loser of a character Stickles is. He has a unique voice, and his lyrics are filled with great literary detail on personal failures and triumphs and relationship struggles. But how many lovable losers populate the musical landscape already with similar stories? Stickles and Co.’s influences are obvious and dear to me, but I can go back and listen to those influences (The Replacements, Hold Steady) for my fix of punk inspired rock’n’roll by the drunk and the lonely. I bet Titus Andronicus puts on a great live show, their energy and confidence is apparent and there are some solid hooks on The Monitor, but the civil war concept isn’t enough to save the album from its bloated run time and simple song structures.

(The video version of “A More Perfect Union” is chopped in half length-wise, which makes the song twice as good as far as I’m concerned.)

Tokyo Police Club - Champ

2011-03-16T14:31:00.004-04:00

Release Date: June 8, 2010

★★★★★ Tracks:
Favourite Colour
Wait Up (Boots of Danger)
Bambi

Extending the length of their songs was nearly all it took for Tokyo Police Club to make their evolving sound work. On the previous album the first track, “Centennial,” is one minute and fifty-four seconds long, so short in the context of all the ideas crammed in to it you can never familiarize yourself with its melody before it ends; an issue with most of Elephant Shell. Here on Champ we get a similar introductory track in approach (intros that build in volume and tone before culminating into guitar/synth driven pop-punk anthems), but clocking in at three minutes and fifty-five seconds the song has enough time for an introduction plus a fully fleshed out composition, full of solid hooks and a chorus. Songs like “End of a Spark” and “Wait Up” are perfect examples of the new refined Tokyo Police Club, which adapt a more straightforward verse/chorus/verse structure -- the key difference being the added length allows for the instrumental highlights to breathe and flow more organically. “Breakneck Speed” and “Hands Reversed” are impressive slower tempo songs, adding more versatility to the group's arsenal. And while Champ still has a few songs clocking in under three minutes, they are simpler and more contagious, with “Bambi” (at 2:44) being the highlight of the entire album.

The juvenile lyricism is still a bit of an obstacle but Monks has harnessed his nasally delivery, removing the most grating quality to the songs on Elephant Shell. Tokyo Police Club continue to move further away from the garage and punk rock I preferred off of their first two EPs, but Champ sees the band improving and growing more confident in their sound. By doing so they’ve turned me from an outright skeptic, to optimistically awaiting their next release.

Tokyo Police Club - Elephant Shell

2011-03-10T12:12:00.001-05:00

Release Date: April 22, 2008

★★★★★ Tracks:
Your English is Good

I suppose Tokyo Police Club couldn’t continue writing science fiction songs indefinitely, it would have eventually gotten silly -- everyone knows the Matrix sequels sucked after all. And if signing to the same label as Cursive and Bright Eyes was indicative of their intentions, they would move further away from their garage rock leanings on the first two EPs and adopt a more straight up emo sound. But the gameplan for Elephant Shell takes a lot of the excitement out of TPC’s music. Although on their earlier recordings the late 70's punk/new wave sound didn't scream complete originality, they had a fresh take on the genre and approached their influences with precision. The group still sounds cohesive, but the refreshing qualities are missing. This form of post-hardcore and power-pop was exhausted less than a decade ago, and there's nothing here on Elephant Shell to shake up the formula. There are plenty of lamentably sentimental (read: emo) lyrics, often focusing on the loss of childhood and the accounting of immature love:

“Meet me where your mother lies
We'll dig graves on both her sides
And lay ourselves in side”

“Dead lovers salivate
Broken hearts tessellate"

"I've put down my middle name
In the back of her book
And signed it just in case
Our walk was over love”

Combined with the decision to take the distortion out of the vocals, Dave Monks’ nasally delivery can be unbearable during some versus.

I can often ignore subpar lyricism as long as the instrumentation can pick up the slack, but for an album built more on melodicism and songwriting than its predecessors, Elephant Shell is surprisingly lacking in hooks. Tracks like “Juno” and “Listen to the Math” are monotonous even with their less than three minute run times. Then on the opposite end of the spectrum songs “Centennial,” “Sixties Remake,” and “Nursery Academy” make it obvious they were trying to fit too many ideas in to two minute windows, sacrificing efficient song structure in the process. If they wanted to forego more of the same basic verse/chorus/verse arrangements, I would have liked to hear more instrumental interludes and breakdowns, which are all but absent on Elephant Shell.

All that being said there are a few bright moments here. “In a Cave” is one of the catchier tracks, with keyboardist Graham Wright’s high pitched melody and guitarist Josh Hook’s distorted tremolo picking blending gorgeously during the song’s closing verse and outro. “The Harrowing Adventures of...” features TPC at their lightest, and the slow building arrangement shows their potential as skilled songwriters. But Elephant Shell’s highlight is “Your English is Good,” where the band lets go of their over-earnestness and sentimentality to re-embrace their punk influences -- it’s the song that sounds the least calculated of the bunch, and in turn the most fun.

("Your English is Good" is a bit of an outlier so I'll post "In a Cave," which matches the overall tone of the album more.)

Tokyo Police Club - A Lesson in Crime

2011-03-03T16:08:00.003-05:00

Release Date: April 27, 2006

★★★★★ Tracks:
Nature of the Experiment
Citizens of Tomorrow
Shoulders & Arms

A kid lets out a breath of cool, red, Martian air as he remembers something his mother told him:

"This is not how we planned it
But we've gotten ahead of ourselves
Computers rule the planet
And the moon and mars as well
We lost the fight"

The boy now lives in a world where robots rule the world (and the moon and Mars), the people are microchipped slaves who build spaceships as they talk about the days when life was simpler. This is the premise to Tokyo Police Club’s terrific science fiction fantasy, “Citizens of Tomorrow.” The music matches the subject matter with the precision of a band that’s been doing it for years; synthy organs mimic the sounds of computer drones and empty dial tones, spastic guitars and a distorted bass line give the apex a nervous energy to match the hopelessness of humanity’s situation. It’s all done with a a sense of dark wit as well, as singer Dave Monks mournfully sings in the closing verse:

“I have a microchip
Implanted in my heart
So if I try to escape
The robots will blow me apart
And my limbs will go flying
And land before the ones that I love
Who would wail and would weep
But the robots would keep them at bay
While I shut my eyes
For the very last time
Citizens of tomorrow be forewarned”

The rest of the songs included on Tokyo Police Club's first ever release, A Lesson in Crime, are similar in style to that of “Citizens of Tomorrow;” dance-punk revivalism smoothly blended with more fascinations towards human destruction (“Shoulders & Arms,” “Le Ferrassie”), or lyrics of love (“Nature of the Experiment,” “Be Good”), or both (“Cheer It On”). The agitation associated with growing up, growing wary of big brother, and the confusing feelings associated with love are expertly captured here in a blazing sixteen minutes on their first EP. This young group received massive hype after just a few concerts, showcases, and the release of A Lesson in Crime. Could they repeat the incredible promise they showed here with their first proper full length? It's up next.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - Greatest Hits

2011-02-28T13:39:00.024-05:00

Release Date: November 16, 1993

★★★★★ Tracks:
American Girl
Breakdown
Don't Do Me Like That
I Won't back Down
Free Fallin
Mary Jane's Last Dance

My mom used to listen to some great music. Sure, for every Beach Boys, Beatles or Michael Jackson record sitting atop her shelf there were an equal number of Bette Midlers, Reba McEntires and Dirty Dancing soundtracks to muddle the good and the bad. Overall though she introduced me to a lot of good pop, and chances are about 50/50 you could walk in to the house I grew up in and not hear something that totally sucked playing over the stereo. If you walked in on a good day sometime after the fall of 1993, probably a Saturday morning as my mother rigorously vacuumed and dusted every nook and cranny in the house, you might hear Tom Petty’s Greatest Hits. Tom Petty won’t win you many hip points, but damn if he doesn’t write some of the catchiest pop-rock tracks you’ve ever heard. With its great nostalgic familiarity, deceptive craftiness, undeniable cheesiness, but overall enjoyability, the song that perfectly encapsulates Petty's music is “Free Fallin.” I imagine it as one of those epic road trip songs everyone sings along to; Jerry Maguire knows exactly what I'm talking about.

I don’t know Tom Petty album for album all that well, but his Greatest Hits collection is brilliant. You’d be surprised how much of these songs you know and like. The album starts off with the quick-tempoed “American Girl” before quickly and quietly settling in to Tom Petty’s first ever single and my personal favorite of his in “Breakdown.” It’s a gorgeous piece of rock and soul that carries a tinge of 70’s glam you won’t hear in his later work. Output from ‘78-’85 follows (another great aspect to this record is its chronological order), with highlights including “Refugee” and “Don’t Do Me Like That,” both coming from what most critics agree is his best album in Damn the Torpedoes. “Free Fallin,” “I Won’t Back Down,” “Into the Great Wide Open,” and “Learning to Fly” were all originally included on two records, Full Moon Fever, which is his first without the Heartbreakers, and Into the Great Wide Open, and they are his most recognizable tracks to the late 80’s/early 90’s MTV generation like myself. Of the last two songs is another personal favorite, one made exclusively available on the Greatest Hits album but becoming immensely popular in its own right. "Mary Jane's Last Dance” would climb to #1 on the Rock Charts and leave us with a great, memorable, and morbid music video starring Kim Basinger.

Unfortunately my mom’s music tastes have diminished with her age. I don’t get to see her often now that we live on opposite ends of the eastern seaboard, but I know you will no longer find Tom Petty adorning her music shelf, and you won’t find Abbey Road sitting in her mini-SUV. What you will find is more Clay Aiken CDs than I ever knew existed, something by KT Tunstall, more of the same shitty country-pop she listened to, and I’m betting her newest addition is something like Lady Antebellum or Streisand’s Greatest Hits. She should enjoy whatever it is she enjoys but it’s sad to see this age old tale of growing up and tuning out. I never want to be a part of the crowd that finds it fashionable to be ignorant of new music. Aren’t most of us disturbed by the Arcade Fire/Grammy debacle? Do we want to become the next generation of old and out of touch music listeners who know nothing about one of the great rock bands of our time? I don’t. And it’s why I still love the quest to find new music. Going backwards is just as much fun as going forwards though, and if you haven’t done so yet you should take a trip with Tom Petty; I can't think of a singular artist that captures Americana as perfectly as he does.

Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones

2011-02-17T10:55:00.006-05:00

Release Date: September 1983

★★★★★ Tracks:
Johnsburg, Illinois
16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six
Frank’s Wild Years
Soldier’s Things
Gin Soaked Boy

Swordfishtrombones didn’t grab my attention as quickly as Rain Dogs did. The problem resided in its slow build; with its best songs nested in the latter half of the record, I’d turn it off after the first couple of tracks and go back to Rain Dogs for my Tom Waits fix. But patience this time around has led me to two bluesy gems in “16 Shells From a Thirty Ought Six” and “Gin Soaked Boy.” From there the rest of the album grabbed a hold of me. “Underground” starts us off encompassing that new Tom Waits sound; natural, eclectic instrumentation, chaotic but sparse percussion, slinky electric guitars, and fiction-oriented storytelling. “Johnsburg, Illinois” is reminiscent of his earlier piano-driven songs, but more interestingly layered with his newly acquired smoke and booze destructed voice. There are a few spoken-word tracks that add more tonal variety in “Trouble’s Braids,” “Shore Leave” and “Frank’s Wild Years,” the latter of which shows off Waits’ dark sense of humor. And the few instrumentals demonstrate the vaudeville and carnival themes he would further develop on his next record.

There isn’t a decade in pop history more defined by a single style of music than the 80’s, but Tom Waits’ music transcends it. Show someone a New Order single or a Huey Lewis record, they most likely will be able to pinpoint the 80’s as its place of residence. Show them Swordfishtrombones or Rain Dogs and they could easily assume it's some songwriter influenced by blues and rock with a minor obsession for crime noir, or they might just as easily presume it's a record your grandfather gave you from his childhood. That it came from '83 would surprise most I imagine, and it's one of the more enjoyable aspects of Tom Waits’s music thus far -- it isn’t trapped in some nostalgic time frame. That abrasive voice and those vast influences touched upon in these two records might turn off the masses, but they've established that you aren't going to find many songwriters as unique and entertaining as Waits.

Tom Waits - Rain Dogs

2011-02-08T15:03:00.016-05:00

Release Date: September 30, 1985

★★★★★ Tracks:

Most of them.

That voice is insane. He sounds like a goddamned pirate; a mix of Howlin’ Wolf, Leonard Cohen and Isaac Brock at his most obnoxious, but still uniquely a sound all its own. Tom Waits is a relatively new discovery for me. My first exposure came from a somewhat generic piano ballad I stumbled upon in college called “San Diego Serenade.” An ex had just moved there which made it an easy choice to include on the next mixed tape I was making her. I didn’t actually think much of the song though, and it wasn’t until a few years later I heard the new and (un)improved Tom Waits. Season two to the greatest show ever made had my favorite version of its title track, a strange and bluesy little song containing one of the most abrasive and raspiest voices I have ever heard. It was Waits. How had I heard such a different version of the songwriter? As I dug through his history, I didn’t find it at all surprising to read that he spent the majority of the the 70’s boozing and smoking, and all that partying turned his voice to shit. “San Diego Serenade” was released in 1974, making my first sample of Tom Waits the much healthier, but also less experimental and interesting, version of the songwriter that evolved through the 80's. So the 80’s is where I would begin my journey through his discography, and having been picked as his landmark album by most critics, Rain Dogs was my first choice.

The opening track, “Singapore,” a song that invokes dark seas, old wooden caravels and shady characters, had me intrigued immediately. Each Tom Waits track is like its own little epic movie. I’ve never heard such captivating, fucked-up stories in the shape of songs; even the instrumentation on its own conjures cultures and eras. “Cemetery Polka” sounds like a song for the carny. “Tango ‘Til They’re Sore” updates that great Old West saloon sound with a tinge of blues and old, American theater, with Waits singing my favorite lines on the record:

"Turn the spit on that pig and kick the drum and let me down
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'til I get back in town
Let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair
Deal out Jacks or Better on a blanket by the stairs
I'll tell you all my secrets, but I lie about my past
So send me off to bed for evermore"

“Big Black Mariah” finds Waits adapting delta blues and the big, booming voice of the Howlin’ Wolf. He can take it down a notch too, and it’s almost comical when that destroyed voice of a lunger comes in to sing the more romantic songs like “Hang Down Your Head,” “Time,” and “Downtown Train,” but they’re all the more powerful and unique because of it.

The music had also become more distinguished than the rather straightforward “San Diego Serenade.” Waits attributes a lot of this new direction to his wife, whom he married in 1980. She was the one who introduced him to Captain Beefheart (who’s music I still have not explored myself), helped him to quit smoking and drinking, and co-wrote some of his songs from Swordfishtrombones onward. On Rain Dogs we get a little bit of everything, from rock’n’roll, to blues, to vaudeville, to R&B, to gospel. Having grown wary of the all the electronic trends in music (Tears for Fears and Madonna had some of the biggest singles of 1985), Tom Waits went out to record a completely natural sounding record. He would tape record rain, cars driving by, faucets running, pipes clanging, and he went about replicating them with instruments. There’s a hell of a lot of novel percussion, and Waits says, "if we couldn't get the right sound out of the drum set we'd get a chest of drawers in the bathroom and bang it real hard with a two-by-four," such that "the sounds become your own.” Most of Rain Dogs was written in a rough area of the West Village (hard to think of now but this was 1984-85), and he wanted the sound and the lyrics to revolve around the “urban dispossessed.” It’s a record for the lonely, the strange, the wicked; the outcasts of New York. For me, it’s a record of theatrics, as if each song could be set to a screenplay and put on camera. It's one of the most unique and artistic pieces of pop music I've ever heard.

Tool - AEnema

2011-01-27T14:17:00.026-05:00

Release Date: September 17, 1996

★★★★★ Tracks:

Forty-Six & 2

AEnima

My introduction to Tool was through the frightening video for “Sober” that frequented MTV in 1993. You know the one; a puppet even more disturbing than something from a Tim Burton movie mopes around a few ugly rooms and eventually shakes his hand uncontrollably. As a thirteen year old tuning in to watch Alternative Nation and Headbanger’s Ball as often as I could, seeing the video for “Sober” was similar to catching Friday the 13th or A Nighmare on Elm Street, the scary imagery and controversial subject matter (“Jesus, won’t you fucking whistle / Something but what’s past and done?”) scared me a little, but the taboo-qualities the video embodied invariably made it cool. With the parental advisory sticker as big and bright as day on the cover of Undertow, my parents wouldn’t dare buy me a copy. My friend Mike’s parents weren’t so strict however, and when I first heard the record another one of the tracks immediately caught my ear; “Prison Sex,” which would become a music video as well, we dug for the same reasons we enjoyed “Sober” -- it had a few cool riffs and it was kind of disgusting (“I have found some type of temporary sanity / In this shit, blood and cum on my hands.”).

By high school I had all but forgotten about Tool until I heard a new song of theirs circulating the airwaves sometime in 1997, and the eight-minute long “Eulogy” appealed to my anti-theistic views enough for me to go out and grab a copy. Initially I was floored, and for quite a few months there I couldn’t take the fucking thing out of my CD player. And so this is where I feel the need to preface my story: I was really in to LSD for most of my senior year. I mean it. We used to drop nearly every Saturday night, we’d drop during school field trips, we’d drop during road trips to Orlando, we’d even drop at school. It's not something I'm necessarily proud of but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a dominant aspect of my life when Tool was in the rotation, and with songs about wishing on the apocalypse, prying open a third eye, false martyrdom, and how Tool and Bill Hicks both agree hallucinogenics are good for music, AEnema represented the soundtrack to an LSD trip.

Having only heard AEnima a handful of times over the past decade I was looking forward to its entry in to the blog. A few times through and the instrumentation is just as good as I remembered it. Adam Jones, who most would agree isn’t a virtuoso, has a way of blending dropped tunings, hammer-ons, pull-offs, and pedal effects to gives Tool’s music its distinction. Danny Carey, on the other hand, is one of the greatest rock drummers of all time, to hear him use his wide array of toms and cymbals, implementing double bass while occasionally guiding the group through odd time signatures is phenomenal. Justin Chancellor fleshes out the low levels with great bass lines that often sit at the forefront of Tool’s songs. With “H.” and “Stinkfist” I immediately hear what drew me in; there are some truly memorable hooks here. “Forty-Six & 2” has one of the best drum solos in contemporary rock music (whatever happened to drum solos anyways?), and “AEnema,” the most popular track included, has a legendary breakdown filled with images of tidal waves and meteors.

But overall revisiting Tool has led to disappointment. The problem resides in James Maynard’s vocals. I no longer relate to this shit at thirty years old. When I hear Bill Hicks’ speech and Maynard’s lyrics on “Third Eye,” I’m embarrassed that I spent so much time trying to decipher the philosophical (i.e. trippy) meaning behind its story. I’m not sure what all the snake imagery is supposed to suggest in “Forty-Six & 2” and “H,” but it just sounds corny. “Eulogy,” the song that got me to buy this record in the first place makes me cringe now; what used to sound like fist-pumping opposition to Christianity when I was seventeen years old as Maynard sings, “Come down / Get off your fucking cross / We need the fucking space / To nail the next fool martyr,” now sounds cold and offensive. And that’s just the problem: Tool is a band focused on social commentary, but their overall execution is poor. “Eulogy” could have been a great piece of religious criticism, instead it’s a seething attack on Jesus. “Stinkfist” appears to be a critique on over-stimulation, but its metaphorical relationship to fisting is overkill. Then there’s “Prison Sex,” a song that I thought was so cool as a kid because of its foul language is now utterly disturbing knowing the lyrics revolve around sexual child abuse.

I guess as I’ve grown up, I’ve grown out of some of the more pissed-off music I listened to. Unlike Beck's Odelay or Sublime's 40 oz., Tool doesn't remind me of the good times I was having with my buddies in senior year of high school, getting drunk and high and laughing my ass off, Tool reminds me of the trouble I was having with my family and friends, and the anxious uncertainty of where life was taking me after graduation. My only Tool fix going forward will probably come from their third single, "AEnema," the one song included that combines its social commentary with a little wit.

TV on the Radio - Dear Science,

2011-01-19T12:54:00.030-05:00

Release Date: September 22, 2008

★★★★★ Tracks:

Halfway Home
Crying
Dancing Choose
Golden Age
DLZ

I pre-ordered TV on the Radio's third record in the summer of 2008 and couldn’t wait for it to arrive at my doorstep. What I immediately noticed when the needle hit the vinyl was they weren't content on playing it safe. The group continued to evolve with each passing record, using the increasing big label production budgets and studio technology at their disposal to recreate themselves all over again. Whereas Desperate Youth, Blood Sucking Babes is the sound of the urban sprawl and Return to Cookie Mountain is the "music you will listen to when the whole world burns up," Dear Science, (derived from a note Sitek wrote in the studio stating, “Dear Science, please start solving problems and curing diseases or shut the fuck up.”) is the dance party in its aftermath; a record even grander in scope and sleekness than its predecessor. Embracing their funk and electro-pop influences, Dear Science’s core is driven by a heavy dosage of percussion and multilayered vocals; their second single, “Dancing Choose,” finds Adebimpe bringing his rap skills to the table over a speedy off-kilter 4/4 drum beat, “Red Dress” is a full on funk explosion, complete with drum samples, bongos and blaring horns, and “Love Dog” pushes the beat to the forefront while Adebimpe questions and yearns for a God. Although Sitek’s guitars and samples aren’t as dominant here, his role as lead producer is unparalleled. If there is any ego to these guys it is contained in their quest to continually challenge music's boundaries.

Dear Science, not only finds TV on the Radio at their most resourceful but also their most playful. I’ve never delved in to Prince’s records but I can’t help but think a lot of songs were inspired out of his music when I hear the dance-inspired “Love Dog,” “Golden Age” and “Crying.” TVOTR has always embraced the funk but they've included more of their pop sensibilities here too, and with the help of a couple of strong singles, Dear Science, peaked at #12 on the Billboard charts, making this their most accessible record yet. With all that said I’m amazed by how many people haven’t given TV on the Radio a proper listen, or even heard of them. This record crosses so many genres I’d have a hard time believing anyone who couldn’t find something to like in it. My favorite song, and one that might just match “Staring at the Sun” as my favorite TVOTR track overall, is “DLZ.” Never a band to shy from social commentary, “DLZ” is riddled in criticisms of the great evil forces science has constructed and the politicians who wield them, Adebimpe speaks of “death professors” and “forcing fires” before he finally warns with his last line, “this is beginning to feel like the dawn of the luz of forever.”

DLZ was used at the end of an episode of Breaking Bad, which ended up being one of the best scenes of the season.

TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain

2011-01-13T13:31:00.011-05:00

Release Date: September 12, 2006

★★★★★ Tracks:

I Was a Lover
Hours
Province
Wolf Like Me
Dirtywhirl

The best story behind TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain is hearing how David Bowie’s vocals ended up on “Province.” Sometime around 2003, Dave Sitek sold a painting to a man who happened to be Bowie’s doorman. During the exchange Sitek asked if the buyer might pass along a copy of the band’s demo to the illustrious songwriter, and not only did the doorman oblige, but Bowie took the time to listen to it and came out the other end a full-fledged fan. Shortly after TV on the Radio’s Young Liars EP was released, Sitek was at a gas station when he received a call. When the man on the other end claimed to be none other than David Bowie, Sitek promptly hung up the phone. The group apparently had a friend who liked to act out a lot of practical jokes and Sitek assumed this was one of them. Bowie had to call back two more times, finally stating, “No, I’m really David Bowie,” before the reality of it began to sink in. “He probably said some really important things that I was just too startled to pay attention to,” Sitek says.

Since then Bowie has advised the band in a number of ways, and when TV on the Radio finally began working on their landmark record Bowie joined the group in the studio to collaborate on a song of his choosing. When asked about the recording process of Return to Cookie Mountain, Sitek was quoted as saying he wanted to make “music you will listen to when the whole world burns up,” and nothing on the record ignites cataclysmic imagery more so than “Province” does, the song Bowie chose to collaborate on. The voices of Adebimpe, Malone, and Bowie blend apocalyptic metaphors with cautious words on the irrevocable path the country appeared to be headed under the Bush administration. Stirring underneath, a barren bass line and distant guitar melody explode in to a wall of sound at the chorus while all three of them begrudgingly croon, “hold your hearts courageously as we walk in to this dark place...” The dust eventually settles in to an eerie four note piano line.

Return to Cookie Mountain’s greatness has been written about everywhere, from being listed on countless “Records of the Decade” lists to being fully endorsed by some of the biggest recording artists ever. Not only is it critically acclaimed, but it also found TVOTR gaining mainstream traction, charting as high as #46 on the U.S. charts. The group quickly began appearing on shows like SNL and Letterman, rocking arenas and benefit concerts, and even contributing a downloadable track to the Rock Band series. It’d be difficult for me to pick a favorite TV on the Radio record, but if I had to recommend one it’d probably be Return to Cookie Mountain due to a few key tracks. “Province” has already been mentioned but “Wolf Like Me” is the catchiest of the bunch; another song that represents Adebimpe’s preference for imagery and metaphors over direct storytelling, carnal instincts towards lust and love predominate the lyrics he so ferociously spews. In the end though my favorite might just be the waltzy “Dirtywhirl,” one of the most intriguing, contemporary takes on old soul and doo-wop I’ve heard.

TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes

2011-01-06T13:19:00.012-05:00

Release Date: March 9, 2004

★★★★★ Tracks:

The Wrong Way
Staring at the Sun
Dreams
Ambulance
Don’t Love You

It was the summer of 2006 when I first moved to New York and it was the first time I heard TV on the Radio. The apartment my wife and I found bordered Sunnyside and Long Island City in Queens, and as I took my first adventurous walks around the urban sprawl that was my new neighborhood I would play “Staring at the Sun” on repeat, a song I had quickly become addicted to. It, along with the rest of Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, was unlike anything I had heard. Perhaps it was coincidental, but the record sounded like a sonic representation of the New York I read about and was now seeing for the very first time; the mish-mash of cultures in the outer-boroughs mimicked the mish-mash of musical styles; the social and political messages resounded in the city that surrounded me; the vibrant, busy activity contrasted perfectly with the more isolated lyrics; the subways, spray paint and Five Pointz street art blended with the group’s post-punk influences. I was playing the soundtrack to the city I was now calling my new home.

As I took a deeper look in to TV on the Radio’s history the connection between the group and the city grew stronger. They originally formed around Dave Sitek and Tunde Adebimpe, both transplants who moved to Brooklyn in the early 2000s. It was around this time that the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs broke it big, hurtling in a New York city music revival that's still growing today. TV on the Radio continued the trend by setting up shop in a neighborhood that quickly grew in to the city’s music mecca, Williamsburg. The group caught the attention of many with their early recordings, prompting them to begin working with the likes of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner and Liars’ Aaron Hemphill. But in my opinion, their pivotal moment came when Kyp Malone decided to join the band. Malone, a vocalist, guitarist, programmer, and Brooklyn native, really cemented TV on the Radio’s sound by adding additional guitar and programming, but most importantly, backing-up Adebimpe’s vocals with his signature falsettos. Between Dave Sitek’s phenomenal production, the group’s complex songwriting and lyricism, TV on the Radio had quickly developed in to one of the most interesting bands around.

Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes is considered the weakest collection of songs from TV on the Radio but I disagree with the sentiment. “Staring at the Sun” might still be my favorite overall track of theirs and although it was already released on the Young Liars EP, it’s the slightly altered version here I heard first and prefer. TVOTR's albums always start out with a bang, and “The Wrong Way” might be the best of them all. A blast of horns and a distorted bass line pave the way for a gorgeous piece of catchy, minimal electronica with Adebimpe tackling black stereotypes in his lyrics. “Dreams” is an eerily isolating song that sounds like it would fit along side some of Trent Reznor’s best work, and it wasn’t surprising to find out he guest appeared to sing it at one of their live performances. There are plenty more highlights here but none can trump the outstanding acapella track “Ambulance,” which contains some of the best lyrics TV on the Radio have ever written:

Oh i will be your accident
If you will be my ambulance
I will be your screech and crash
If you will be my crutch and cast
I will be your one more time
If you will be my one last chance
So fall for me

The last half of the record might rely a bit too much on their obvious Kid A-era Radiohead influences (TVOTR’s first record is entitled OK Calculator) but “Don’t Love You” and “Wear You Out” are both excellent nonetheless. Yes, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes is not quite as grandiose as the two albums that would follow, but pound for pound there are just as many enjoyable moments here.

Twelve Hour Turn - The Victory of Flight

2010-12-21T14:07:00.006-05:00

Release Date: November 1999

★★★★★ Tracks:

New Snake
Second Story
For Want of a Real Whole
A Mouth of Suitable Size
Little One

Anyone who grew up in Florida in the mid-to-late 90's familiar with its underground music scene knows there was a huge post-hardcore movement. Bands like Strikeforce Diablo, I Hate Myself, Omega Man, Poison the Well, (early) Hot Water Music are all examples but The Victory of Flight by Twelve Hour Turn best represents the sub-genre I really dig, screamo. Yeah yeah, laugh it up. It has a ridiculous name, and being directly associated with emo has allowed it to be completely overlooked. But that doesn’t mean it’s inconsequential. While there are plenty of clear paths from influential 90’s rockers like Radiohead and Pavement to current-day indie rock, there are also a lot of great bands who took notes by listening to Fugazi. Instead of following in the footprints of the birth of pop by creating verse-chorus-verse songs using almost exclusively major chords, Fugazi was interested in gathering ideas from reggae and jazz while incorporating the punk rock sound of groups like Wire, Joy Division or Gang of Four; sonic tones that, to this day, are still ripe for exploring. And in creating these distorted, diminished, discord-like guitars and abrasively shouted vocals, a slew of new bands followed ready to push those sounds further. Enter Twelve Hour Turn.

Twelve Hour Turn’s first record is certainly not for everyone, and has probably never been heard by most anyone, but completely fucking phenomenal nonetheless. I’d go through the record’s highlights but there’s no point. If you like this kind of thing, the raw emotion in both singer’s voices as they scream their way through a half hour’s worth of blistering 2-minute long post-punk tracks, every song included is a highlight. The unconventional instrumentation is spectacular as well; two guitars (always separated by L/R speakers) staccato picking off key-notes, made-up chords and diminished key progressions, bass patterns that border on avant-garde, and effortless transitions between 4/4 and ¾ (waltz) timings. I’m not sure this is applied music theory or just four guys fucking around until they hit something that clicks, but what is obvious is Twelve Hour Turn was throwing the rock’n’roll rulebook out the window: This is a garage band created by guys who were tired of the same old garage bands.

2010 was another great year for music, but most of the stuff you'd find populating critics' "best of" lists borrows from the same sounds and chord progressions that have been recycled for the past 60 years. Creative, good hard rock has all but vanished. Rooted in the already polarizing genre of punk rock, Twelve Hour Turn’s brand is a bit too harsh for most, but there's still plenty to explore and experiment with here. Music tends to be cyclical, so here's hoping 2011 brings us a few bands willing to break the mold and rock the fuck out again.

U2 - The Joshua Tree

2010-12-09T11:30:00.006-05:00

Release Date: March 9, 1987

★★★★★ Tracks:

With or Without You

I want to try and avoid as much negativity as possible, and it’s that very reason I wasn’t looking forward to this entry. I mean, I’m not necessarily reviewing artists and albums as much as I’m simply shooting the shit here. And after all, most anything I cover in my music library should be music I enjoy, or it wouldn’t be there in the first place. But anytime U2 comes up, I can’t help but think of one of the most overrated bands of all time. Every few years I end up grabbing a few songs or an album in an attempt to get in to them. Not much time passes before disappointment settles, and eventually U2 gets the boot. I'm turned off by the intentional grandiosity of everything. Am I the one being pretentious or does Bono sound pretentious as hell every time he sings or speaks? Why do I have to refer to their guitarist as “The Edge?” With such simple chord progressions, must every song be so damn lengthy? And why oh why is the vastly overrated “One” played at every wedding imaginable (even prompting Bono to exclaim, “Are you mad? It’s about splitting up!”). Even getting past all of this and focusing on the songs, well, they just aren’t very good. There’s nothing relatable to me in Bono’s lyrics. The music doesn’t excite me. My mom had Achtung Baby and played it quite a bit. I began to loathe it. One day in college, for not wanting to leave empty handed, I grabbed the newly released, All That You Can Leave Behind. Full disclosure, I actually love “Beautiful Day,” but the rest of the album was, at best, unsatisfactory. Since then all I remember of U2 is that Bono has become a knight and the band released some annoying single which begins with Bono incoherently exclaiming, “Uno, dos, tres, catorce!” (1, 2, 3, ...14!?)

The one U2 album I do keep in my library is The Joshua Tree. I rarely visit it as a whole, but the slow building “With or Without You” is a fantastic track. It’s one of the few U2 songs (that I’ve heard) that sounds intimate, and not something intended to pack an arena. After repeated listens this week I’ve realized I enjoy the first two tracks, “Where the Streets Have No Name” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” in all their grandiose glory as well. But the album quickly loses life after those three highlights. I know I am being a bit unfair considering my lack of familiarity with U2’s earlier work. Perhaps if I were to delve in to U2’s pre-Joshua Tree discography I would find some tunes I enjoy. Apparently they were a post-punk outfit at one point. However the U2 I know and hear fits the very definition of impersonal arena rock. They sound like they’re trying too hard; not only to tackle sociopolitical and spiritual issues within their music, but in keeping up with marketable modern pop music. Every single they write sounds like some space-aged glam rock track you wouldn’t hear in any lesser venue than Madison Square Garden. I can dig some of the bigger rock groups out there, but I prefer my brand of music to be a bit more personal. The only time I get that feeling from U2 is when I skip to track three on The Joshua Tree, and the slow, quiet build of “With or Without You” begins.

Urge Overkill via Pulp Fiction - "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon"

2010-11-30T12:27:00.011-05:00

Release Dates: September 27, 1994

When Did I Download This? Just two nights ago, actually. Over Thanksgiving Weekend, between stuffing my face with stuffing and turkey and hanging with friends and family, I’ve been reading a series of excellent articles at the AV Club covering music from the 1990’s entitled Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? So far it’s done a fantastic job of not only portraying rock’s grunge period and what it meant to us as teenagers growing up, but also how different alternative music was before the internet. Hyden says, “underground music was really underground; you had to venture out and look for it, and only after somebody let you in on the secret that it was actually there.” In a line he succinctly writes what I spent a lot of my time talking about in my Vampire Weekend and Violent Femmes posts. As a teenager, hours were devoted to scouring liner notes and indie magazines (sometimes unavailable in small town stores), talking to friends, catching small-time opening acts, and most importantly watching MTV. Another platform was movie soundtracks; The Crow, Juice, Reality Bites, Trainspotting, and one of the more classic R&B and rock inclined, Pulp Fiction, and they would all act as points to expand our musical boundaries.

Somehow in October of 1994, as a 14-year old kid, a couple of friends and I were able to sneak in to a theater to see the violent, profane, no-doubt-about-it ‘R’-rated Pulp Fiction. While I vaguely remember liking it, probably more for all the f-bombs being thrown around than grasping how great of a movie it truly was, it wouldn’t forever hold a place in my conscious until a friend bought the VHS sometime later. I remember him playing it incessantly, sometimes simply acting as background noise while we took turns playing guitar or Gameboy. I could tell he dug the music just as much as the movie, which, being as he was two years my senior and I looked up to him, made me really dig it as well. There was the surf tune from Dick Dale, Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher’s Man, and Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” But my favorite was from the scene immediately following the twist contest. There’s something both sexy and hip about the moment when Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) begins that old music reel, strums the opening chord to “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” on her air guitar, and breaks in to a frenzied dance when the song crescendos. Though it's very unhip when she ultimately overdoses on Vince’s (John Travolta) heroin.

Every time I came across Pulp Fiction on TV, or the film came up in discussion, I tried to remind myself I needed to grab the soundtrack. But I always forgot. In fact, I didn’t even know the song from my favorite scene is a cover of Neil Young performed by Urge Overkill up until this past Sunday, while I was reading the fourth entry of Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? I like the limited amount of Neil Young’s discography I’ve collected, and I had heard of Urge Overkill, but I didn’t have wiki or youtube as an immediate reference point back then to look up where the song originated. I've never remembered to look at the back of a Pulp Fiction soundtrack in all those years since. Two nights ago, I went over to my computer, clicked the mouse button a few times, and “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” was loaded in to my music library. I’ve already played it a few times. It’s a good song, but after all these years I think I like it better in the context of an unknown classic from an unforgettable scene in that great 1994 film.

(Note: I know this should have preceded Ugly Casanova, but being as I just downloaded Urge Overkill two nights ago, that would've been impossible. I felt it wouldn’t hurt to go backwards (or forwards) one entry.)

Ugly Casanova - Sharpen Your Teeth

2010-11-24T11:30:00.016-05:00

Release Dates: May 21, 2002

★★★★★ Tracks:

Barnacles

Things I Don’t Remember

It got old. Flipping through this particular girlfriend’s CD travel case and seeing page after page of Modest Mouse. Proper releases, EPs, mixes of best songs, bootlegs, she had it all. Just from simply knowing someone for so long so well, it was one of those insignificant obsessions that became very significant to me. I couldn’t get myself to like Isaac Brock’s strange lisp and even stranger blend of rock and folksy psychedelia, but more than anything, I didn’t like that she had found her new favorite band after she moved out west. Modest Mouse was directly associated with our drifting apart. However on her frequent return visits, she force fed my Plymouth Sundance those countless records. And the more I heard them the more I realized resisting was futile; Modest Mouse, with their eccentric music and powerful lyricism, was in fact much more entertaining than most the crap I was listening to at the time.

Shuffling through said girlfriend’s trapper keeper of music would net you the occasional alternative. Ugly Casanova is one that comes to mind, but being as this particular band was Isaac Brock’s side project, where he got to explore outside the boundaries of his primary group, I’m not sure it counts. Modest Mouse has always skirted the fine line between the elitist indie crowd and the self-loathing emo kids, but Sharpen Your Teeth tilts more towards the latter. Brock is rarely one to write an upbeat pop song you’d put on at a summer pool party, but the tracks contained within are incredibly mellow and often down right depressing. On “Hotcha Girls” he sings, “smells like autumn / smells like leaves / You don’t know that you’ll rust / And not belong so much / And then get left alone.” In “Parasites” Brock says in his usual deadpan voice, “the parasites are excited when you’re dead / Eyes bulging, entering your head / All your thoughts, they rot,” while victorious horns sound in the background.

But Brock has become one of my favorite lyricists, taking thoughts of self-reflection and greater universal questions and turning them in to clever pieces of wordplay. There are a few gems here, none of them any better than on the opening track, “Barnacles,” when he sings, “I don’t know me / And you don’t know you / So we fit so good together because I knew you like I knew myself / We clung on like barnacles on a boat / Even though the ship sinks you know you can’t let go.” Most everything here is backed by subtle acoustic guitars, occasional percussion, and some complimentary instruments; electric guitar, bass, and horns, which all lends itself to an isolated and contemplative batch of songs. There’s a lot to like here for die-hard fans, some of it acts as a bridge to the more mainstream sounds Modest Mouse would develop down the road. But it won’t convert any skeptics. Even for a modest fan like myself, Sharpen Your Teeth is a rare journey I take. It always brings me back to a universal personal experience all of us try to forget, or as Brock says, it “marks the path back to the point of departure.”

Vampire Weekend - Contra

2010-11-19T14:01:00.005-05:00

Release Dates: January 11, 2010

★★★★★ Tracks:

Run

Cousins

I always get a kick out of indie rock outfits vying for position on the Billboard charts with mainstay mainstream artists like the Black Eyed Peas and Taylor Swift. It makes me proud of the greater American public for seeking out music other than the hits they’re force fed through...wherever the masses hear new music these days. The second single released, but the first song I heard from the new album was “Cousins.” Sounding similar to “A-Punk” or “Mansard Roof,” it had me thinking a repeat of Vampire Weekend was likely. However the rest of Contra is much more electronic and uses a wider array of instrumentation. The opening track incorporates a harmonium, a Kalimba thumb piano (the steel drum sound), synths, both electronic and classic-style drums and a few other foreign sounds. Strings and horns are much more common, and dominate tracks like “White Sky” and “Run.” Samples are used in “Dimplomat’s Son,” and vocals are used more as tonal compliments this time around. While all of this can be intriguing, I also think it detracts a little from what Vampire Weekend did so well in the first place; the skill at which they played their primary instruments and the knack they had for complex songwriting. Ezra Koenig’s voice is still the focal point, but he is more abrasive here than ever. He rhymes “Horchata” with balaclava, aranciata, and masada, he hoop and hollers on “Cousins,” and nothing released this year tests my patience more than the falsetto squeals of “White Sky.”

As its name could suggest, Contra has two opposing sides. The first half of the record is mellow, more experimental and atmospheric, while the latter songs quicken the pace and refocus on some of the band's original strengths. We get the album’s highlight in “Run,” which breaks down in to a frenzy of horns and percussion, “Cousins” is incredibly fast and quirky with a slick bass line, their most accessible song on the album in “Giving Up the Gun,” and the M.I.A. sampled “Diplomat’s Son” is a great reggae-infused piece. Were they able to repeat the energy of the second half throughout Contra, it would have had a lot more force. Regardless, the departure from their earlier sound has given Vampire Weekend much more room to work with in preparing for a third album. I see why Vampire Weekend would want to expand their sound. Nearly a decade ago indie rock to pop star icons, the Strokes, made a second album that sounded exactly like their first, and although it was fucking great, they ran out of ideas when they moved on to their third. Vampire Weekend might have set themselves up for longevity, but their first two records don’t match the soul or the hooks of their predecessors. In fact Contra isn’t much different than its neighbors atop the charts; good pop with a couple of great moments, but largely forgettable.

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

2010-11-09T19:09:00.015-05:00

Release Dates: January 29, 2008

★★★★★ Tracks:

Oxford Comma

I Stand Corrected

Vampire Weekend is a household name now. Shit, even my mom has heard of them. Ever since we were introduced to their self-titled release in early 2008 the band has been a part of the collective musical conscience. Those who deem music essential in the age of iTunes and torrents, basically Pitchfork and anyone who frequents Brooklyn’s L train, have been touting them since the first single, “Mansard Roof,” hit in 2007. In my opinion, the point in time in which Vampire Weekend was released was also when Pitchfork really broke in to the mainstream, and it was their appraisal that catapulted the band to pop star status. The groupthink and culture Pitchfork has helped to create combined with the exponential popularity of both the website and the band has naturally led to a lot of criticism. Not only were many turned off by Vampire Weekend’s Columbia college degrees and Cape Cod vacation references, they were growing tired of the hipster hype machine championing bands that sing things like “who gives a fuck about an oxford comma?” There are now entire websites dedicated to mocking the Pitchfork culture; a music publication site has its very own Weird Al Yankovic.

While I understand the cynical sentiment towards the whole process, it doesn’t necessarily make Pitchfork any less important to the current music industry, or less knowledgeable than they were when it was still cool to talk about them. As of now, they're probably the most important agent in determining a band’s success. In a piece by Time (little behind to be putting that piece out in 2010, don’t you think, Time?) Big Boi’s manager discusses how huge it was that his new album received a positive review from the website. Just as Rolling Stone was a barometer for music in the 60’s and 70’s, Pitchfork has become the de facto voice during the digital era. And it’s not just because it was deemed cool by the kids in Brooklyn, it has more to do with the fact that, regardless of their sometimes elitist writing and snarky attitudes, they recommend some really good music. So Vampire Weekend and Pitchfork share an intertwining narrative, both piggybacking off of each other to represent the mainstreaming of a new generation of independent music, while acting as contentious pivotal forces on pop culture. It becomes all the more interesting with nearly every entry Pitchfork writes on the band; they continually bring up the divisiveness Vampire Weekend causes without ever really getting down to one of the core elements that fuels the dissension -- themselves.

So getting back down to it, is Vampire Weekend deserving of the appraisal? Sorta. Their first record is an interesting mix of Caribbean pop and indie rock combined with the clever, if sometimes abrasive, vocals of Ezra Koenig. There are a few great songs here; the organ-driven “Oxford Comma” was one of the better singles of 2008, “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” has a charming eccentricity to it, but “I Stand Corrected” is my favorite, a beautifully restrained piece that works almost exclusively off of keys and a simple bass line. As for the album as a whole, it’s a pretty damn good, sophisticated pop record actually, but it’s just not something I find myself coming back to often. Now is this more indicative of my personal tastes, or will the rest of the crowd determine this is a disposable piece of pop as well? Your guess is as good as mine. But with fourteen million hits on their biggest youtube single and counting, Radio City Music Hall sell-outs, and two chart-seeking albums, it looks like I’m in the minority.

Part of the digital era I find so depressing is how disposable music has become. The sheer velocity of a band’s rising popularity can blow things out of proportion. The time (and money) invested in the music we consume isn’t anything close to what it used to be when we had to go to record stores to find albums, or read liner notes for band influences, or go to shows and actually catch the opening acts. We had no other option but to familiarize ourselves with a record we purchased because, among other reasons, it might be a while before we got our hands on another. Now that people can simply click a couple of buttons before the next buzz band is uploaded to their iPods, band’s shelf lives are growing incredibly short. Compounded by the mass frenzy to find those buzz bands before everyone else does, Vampire Weekend might still become an afterthought eventually. But chances are diminishing. And while it seems most either love or hate the group, I stand somewhere in the middle. I hear the charm in the music they create; it’s fun, it’s breezy, and although polarizing, they do appeal to a wide array of music lovers. It’s just not something I find essential to my collection. Pitchfork might be over-zealous in declaring the next big thing from time to time, but this record’s popularity is proof they have a firm grip on the music industry. With another Billboard charting record under their belts in Contra released just this year, Vampire Weekend will hold on for at least a little while longer as well.

The Velvet Underground - Loaded

2010-11-02T19:35:00.016-04:00

Release Dates: September 1970

★★★★★ Tracks:

Nearly All of Them

It’s been well documented that Velvet Underground’s fourth album was pandering to the billboard charts. Lou Reed and Co. had three of the most influential records of the 60’s under their belts and still didn't have a pot to piss in. With them now signed to mega-label Atlantic, the name Loaded was chosen for the title stemming from the notion it should be loaded with hits. And even with commercialism and mainstream success a driving force to the creation of this record, Lou Reed simply couldn’t find a way to fuck it up, Loaded is in fact completely loaded with hit after fantastic hit.

You won’t find a record with three stronger tracks in succession than Loaded's “Sweet Jane,” “Rock & Roll,” and “Cool It Down.” “Sweet Jane” is up there with “I’m Waiting For the Man” as the best Velvet Underground song ever. Scratch that, best song ever. Some might not recognize it by song title alone, but it becomes as familiar as an old Beatles hit once the melody begins. It'll always get some FM airplay, but its familiarity is most likely due to the fact that this song shaped a blueprint so many would eventually build upon. The four-chord progression, to the awesome solos, to the “Sweeeeeeet Jane!” anthems, to the cocky confidence Lou has in his vocals, this is what every guitar-driven indie rock’n’roll band wants to sound like. Just about every other song here is a gem as well; “Rock & Roll” has some slick guitar work, there’s a throwback to Lou’s doo-wop days in “I Found a Reason,” a Beatles-esque jam in “Who Loves the Sun,” and another bluesy New York number in “Train Round the Bend.”

I might go with The Velvet Underground & Nico album as my overall favorite from the group, but Loaded is the one I play the most. A great record is a great record, and I could give two shits if they were considered by some to be selling out, or that this is considered their least essential, or experimental record. The fact is this is the VU at their most listenable and accessible, and there isn’t anything wrong with a great record everyone can get on board with. And while the three previous records might have been more influential to VU followers, Loaded is the record that represents a strong counterpoint to the argument that an attempt at mainstream success voids artistic merit -- the two can exist harmoniously. Although Warhol’s presence had long been absent from the Velvet Underground, this album is a testament to everything Lou Reed learned from the eccentric artist, Loaded is a fully realized artistic masterpiece, but with a keen eye for and the willingness to adapt to the pulse of pop culture.

The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground

2010-10-26T20:13:00.013-04:00

Release Dates: March 1969

★★★★★ Tracks:

Candy Says
What Goes On
Pale Blue Eyes
That's the Story of My Life
After Hours

While the first two records could be the bombastic, drug induced Friday and Saturday nights that made up the The Velvet Underground’s lives for many years, the third album would be the quiet, reflective Sunday Morning that followed. It’s folksy, hushed, and finds Lou Reed at his most introspective. He and the band appeared to grow tired of the partying, the New York social life, the drugs, Warhol, and were ready to move on. With John Cale booted from the band and a focus on new musical direction, move on the Velvet Underground did. This was now a vehicle where Reed drove his masterful songwriting unilaterally. They added Doug Yule to flesh out the bass, keyboard, and additional vocals, and he does a fantastic job.

While I prefer the louder, livelier version of the Velvet Underground to the quieter brand, you can’t argue with the great songs that are included here. “Pale Blue Eyes” might just be the prettiest damn Reed song ever recorded, and “After Hours,” sung by drummer Maureen Tucker, is so innocent and sugary sweet you can’t help but grin like a kid for the entirety of its two minute length. “What Goes On” gives us a little taste of the rock’n’roll we loved so much from the first record and we get the experimental edge of the second in "The Murder Mystery," another long, spoken word jam.

For those of us who are not religious and prefer it be left out of the music we consume, the middle part of The Velvet Underground can be a bit challenging. Lou Reed, tired of his lifestyle choices over the majority of the 60’s, was turning to Jesus when he began the songwriting. While the instrumentation to “Jesus,” “Beginning to See the Light,” and “I’m Set Free,” are up there with the best of the Velvet Underground tracks, I have a hard time stomaching some of the lyricism. However a man as interesting and innovative as Lou Reed requires me to keep an open mind, and the honest and forthright lyrics about where his journeys through life take him make it worthwhile. Religious differences aside, The Velvet Underground is another spectacular record from one of my favorite bands of all time.

The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat

2010-10-22T16:03:00.011-04:00

Release Dates: January 30, 1968

★★★★★ Tracks:

White Light / White Heat

Here She Comes Now

White Light/White Heat takes all those noisy and abrasive moments from Velvet Underground’s first record and turns them in to six completely chaotic, experimental, amphetamine fuled songs. “The Gift” is an eight minute long spoken-word track (first ever?) written by Lou Reed and told by John Cale. It’s an incredibly odd, frightening yet interesting tale about a young man who dotes over his girlfriend who took off for college so much so, he decides to ship himself to her as a surprise, but something goes awfully wrong. The story is told through the left speaker, while an instrumental is played on the right side. “Sister Ray” is an improvisational, one take, 17-minute long bender, full of feedback, avant-jazz solos, and broken lyrics focusing on drugs, violence and sex. The other four tracks are shorter offerings, but the amplifiers are turned up to 11 on all but one, and they were specifically focused on “anti-beauty.” Sterling Morrison said, "We were all pulling in the same direction. We may have been dragging each other off a cliff, but we were all definitely going in the same direction. In the White Light/White Heat era, our lives were chaos. That’s what’s reflected in the record."

Admittedly I don’t visit White Light/White Heat as much as a self-proclaimed Velvet Underground fan should. Sure this is the Velvet Underground at their most primal and possibly most influential state; the noisiest band of the 60’s managed to get noisier, and they don’t hold back in pushing pop and rock to entirely new boundaries, but the album as a whole isn’t as listenable as their other three proper full lengths. With Andy Warhol and Nico out of the picture the Velvet Underground seemed to lose their pop sensibilities, and all the changes within the band; the drugs, the tireless touring, the internal struggles between Cale and Reed seemingly culminated in to the six destructive, wayward, interesting but challenging songs contained within. But the Velvet Underground's weakest offering is better than most other band's highlights. The title track is what happens when you take a piano-driven saloon song and mix it with a fuzzy garage band. Lou Reed’s story in “The Gift” is pretty damned interesting, and we get a preview of what’s to come on their next album in the quiet “Here She Comes Now."

The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico

2010-10-18T10:14:00.036-04:00

Release Dates: March 12, 1967

★★★★★ Tracks:

Almost all of them.

What’s your favorite song of all time? Tough right? A friend and I were discussing a date she was on recently where they would eventually exchange each other’s favorites. As a pop/rock fan my brain scans the last 50 years of music and comes up with far too wide of a selection to choose just one. Even on a date for the sake of conversation I’m afraid I wouldn’t have an honest answer. A “Top 5” might be do-able, but it'd be a stretch. But if this hypothetical date held a gun to my head and insisted on five songs, I have little doubt “I’m Waiting For the Man” would be included on that list.

I first got hooked on “I’m Waiting For the Man” about ten years ago, when I really sat down and listened to the lyrics. Although I’ve never gotten in to the hard stuff, there’s something I dig about the rebellious nature of drug references in music. When Velvet Underground & Nico was released in 1967, mega-groups the Beach Boys and the Beatles were just beginning to hint to psychedelics influencing their music, but “I’m Waiting For the Man” was overtly about drugs. And not that happy hippie psychedelic shit that was sweeping the nation, this was about Heroin, the hardest drug you can get your hands on. Because of its controversial subject matter the song was banned from airplay on most radio stations. As the percussion bangs persistently and the bluesy music shuffles along to Reed's descriptive lyrics I could see why people were up in arms; it all sounds so fucking cool he's inadvertently inviting you to try the stuff.

Over four years ago I made the monumental move to New York City. Since then, the song speaks to me in new and more interesting ways. Reed paints such a vivid picture of the city; heading up the Lexington subway line to 125th Street, where, once in Harlem, he’s told he’s chasing all their women around as he approaches the brownstone where he obtains his fix, I can’t help but be proud I know exactly what and where he is talking about. Another great New York track is “Run Run Run,” where city references are abundant. A character named Teenage Mary exclaims, “Gonna take a walk down to Union Square! You never know who you're gonna find there!” Although these days she would find little distinction from the regulars frequenting the area; women shopping for shoes at DSW and tourists. A character named Beardless Harry takes a trolley to 47th Street in the same song, where most likely not by coincidence, Andy Warhol’s famous studio, The Factory, was located during most of the 60’s.

“I’m Waiting For the Man” and “Run Run Run” aren’t the only thing going for the The Velvet Underground & Nico. It’s not considered one of the best albums of all time without reason. The harsh and controversial content sped up the process of uncensored lyricism in music. Lou Reed’s multifaceted guitar skills, with his meandering solos, beautiful guitar plucks, and experimental alternate tunings (he invented the Ostrich tuning) point to a very underrated musician. John Cale’s feedback laced viola is still something that hasn’t been replicated in modern music. Nico's inclusion on this record gives the Velvet Underground a variety they were unable to replicate, and her unique German voice suits a band from a city rooted in European immigration. New York artist Andy Warhol’s involvement adds intrigue, and it was at his request that Nico was added to the group (the band wasn't fond of the idea, hence the title of the record). After some time spent with the Velvet Underground it becomes apparent that they are not only the quintessential New York rock’n’roll band, they are one of the most important and influential bands in pop history.

The video below features Edie Sedgwick, one of Andy Warhol "superstars," that he requested a song be written about. Lou Reed agreed to it and came up with “Femme Fatale.” Nico sings the lead vocals.

Vermont - Living Together

2010-10-06T16:06:00.008-04:00

Release Dates: September 28, 1999

★★★★★ Tracks:

Living Together

Often grouped in with divisive late 90’s emo-rock acts Texas Is the Reason, Jimmy Eat World, Get Up Kids, Saves the Day, and countless others, The Promise Ring are sort of misunderstood -- they are first and foremost a pop band. Davey van Bohlen is even on record as saying that they had no idea 30° Everywhere was going to come out so ...emo, so they came in to the recording of Nothing Feels Good with the intentions of making one of the poppiest records ever in order to change that perception. It definitely succeeded in being more upbeat, but it wasn’t quite enough for Davey, and a few years later they recorded quite possibly one of the poppiest records on the planet in Very Emergency.

It might have been pop-overkill, because there’s no getting around the obvious emo-core intentions of Vermont; a side project created by van Bohlen soon after Very Emergency’s release in the fall of ‘99. All those indulgent lyrics on troubled relationship Davey van Bohlen had bottled up for the aesthetic purposes of the Promise Ring are unleashed here on Living Together in all their self-loathing glory. They’re accompanied by sappy acoustic guitars, weepy arpeggio guitar leads, and the occasional software string instrument via keyboards.

Living Together has survived in my collection for over a decade, moving from apartment to apartment and city to city. However it’s showing its age, no longer holding up all that well. I’ll always have an affinity for Davey’s music, but Vermont is an example of both emo’s immaturity, and my immature tastes in music as I was approaching my twenties. It’s a good thing van Bohlen kept the Promise Ring churning in the right direction, by doing so he was able to use his little known side project as a means for indulgent escapism. The title track will continue to travel with me however; sure it has all the qualities listed above, and I’m pretty sure the drums are probably produced by some generic Yamaha keyboard, but the melody is too damn good to ignore.

“You look so happy now
It’s true, you really do
You look so happy now
I would hate to be compared to you”

Vetiver - Tight Knit

2010-09-30T20:34:00.011-04:00

Release Date: February 17, 2009

★★★★★ Tracks:

Through the Front Door

Gone are the woodsy, fall sounds of Vetiver. The cellos and violins are silent. The guest collaborations from Banhart, Newsom and others are missing. This time around Andy Cabric elicits the warm tones of summer to try and craft a more inviting album. They add percussion to nearly every track, and experiment with electric guitars. The songwriting is more pop-oriented, as songs like “Sister” and “More of This” will leave you forgetting you are listening to a folk outfit. And while Tight Knit succeeds in being much more accessible than their debut, it’s also more generic. There isn’t much variance between what's here and what most alternative-folk enthusiasts already have in their libraries: “Rolling Sea” brings early Ryan Adams to mind, “Everyday” should appeal to Badly Drawn Boy fans, and “On the Other Side” sounds like a song produced by the plethora of current Calexico-style country rockers you've already heard. There is one song I’ll be sure to keep however, and although “Through the Front Door” could fit snugly on Beck’s Sea Change, I just can’t get past how damn gorgeous it is.

Vetiver - Vetiver

2010-09-24T10:25:00.011-04:00

Release Dates: May 18, 2004

★★★★★ Tracks:

Los Pajaros del Rio

Amerilie

Another artist in my library I hadn’t ever given a chance, Vetiver produce the sort of lonely, intimate folk that brings those early lo-fi records from Elliott Smith and Iron & Wine to mind. I enjoy and own nearly every Elliott Smith album ever made but I’m easily bored by most percussion-less records. At first Vetiver was no different. However after a couple of times listening to beautifully crafted tracks “Amerilie” and “Aboretum,” and tuning in to the poetic lyrics of “Luna Sea,” the album has begun to resonate.

Vetiver is at its best and most compelling when principal songwriter, Andy Cabric, allows his acoustic guitar to take a backseat to the other instrumentalists included: Joanna Newsom lends her whimsical harp on “Amerilie,” Devendra Banhart provides some stellar finger-picking guitar leads throughout the album, and co-wrote the Spanish, “Los Pajaros del Rio,” but the most interesting dynamic comes from the dual layers of cello and violin frequenting the majority of the tracks. There are a couple of misfires; I find “Amour Fou’s” vocals to be overkill, and a few songs like “Without a Song” and “Belles” linger on too long, leaving me impatient, but overall Vetiver has surprised me. This isn’t a record you are going to put on to start a weekend to, but it’s the type of restrained, woodsy folk that's damn near perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon or a sleepy-eyed commute to work.

The Violent Femmes - S/T and Add It Up

2010-09-20T19:55:00.020-04:00

Release Dates: 11/13/82 & 09/14/93

★★★★★ Tracks:

Blister in the Sun

Kiss Off

Please Do Not Go

Gone Daddy Gone

Mike was one of those kids in middle school who did things a little differently. He had those white and black checkered Vans. He always wore that yellow Charlie Brown shirt with the black stripe. He shopped at the thrift store for plaid trousers and bright colored suspenders. He watched Kids in the Hall and Mr. Bean, and rented movies like Dead Alive and CB4. There wasn't a sport he cared for, instead he spent time practicing and playing his father's guitars and banjos. All of this intrigued me about my new best friend. Weirded me out a bit as well. But regardless of how strange I thought he was, I really looked up to my new buddy when I began to dig through his music collection. I had just gotten in to Nirvana and Helmet via a couple of great MTV videos and thought I was ahead of the curve. Mike proved to me I wasn't. Sure, he liked the Nirvanas and Helmets of the world that, in ‘92-93, were beginning to circulate heavily, but he also dug much deeper: Dead Kennedys, Butthole Surfers, Sonic Youth, Afghan Whigs, Dinosaur Jr., about 40 other bands I could name drop here. How did he ever hear of all this stuff? Where did it come from? And where could I find the latest & greatest before he did? -- a fruitless battle I would soon realize, but Mike got me hooked to the underground rock scene of the early ‘90’s.

Add It Up by the Violent Femmes was one of the other albums he had, and after hearing it a few times I made sure to ask my mom for a ride to the mall so I could grab a copy. As your typical suburban punk-ass teenager, not only was I looking for good music, I wanted the shit that would make my folks cringe. Lucky for me there weren't many more cringe-worthy lyrics for a parent than, “Why can’t I get just one fuck?” Similarly horrifying was the masturbatory “Blister in the Sun,” and the hilarious pleadings to dad in “Gimme the Car;” a song where Gordon Gano explains he is going to pick a girl up and "touch her all over her body." While all of this might sound incredibly juvenile (it is), the Femmes wrote some very innovative, fast rock'n'roll teetering on punk rock. They used acoustic instruments for the most part, a novelty for the genre (they very well could have inspired the term "folk punk"), and gave an uncensored voice to countless adolescent males of early 80's suburbia who had a hard time getting laid.

(epic mullet!)

I picked up a copy of Violent Femmes much later, and was rewarded with a killer record. The compilation really isn’t necessary when you have this one; in fact “Please Do Not Go” and “Prove My Love” are stand-out tracks that Add It Up completely left off. The strongest Femmes track ever recorded is here: “Kiss Off” is a perfectly crafted punk-rock anthem executed with nothing more than a small drum kit and an acoustic guitar and bass. Other stand outs include “Add It Up,” which would be re-popularized for my generation by "Hey, That's My Bike," Ethan Hawke’s fictional band in the movie, Reality Bites. And twelve years later we were reminded of the them all over again when Gnarls Barkley did an excellent cover of the classic "Gone Daddy Gone." By now it's obvious the Violent Femmes have left a permanent mark on rock'n'roll.

Battles

2010-09-15T20:07:00.006-04:00

Another Pitchfork flavor-of-the-week, Battles is something of an indie rock supergroup made up of dudes from Don Caballero, Storm & Stress and Helmet. I downloaded this song from who-knows-where, and I was tempted to just pass on this entry, but rules are rules. I've never heard anything else by them, and this track is so unremarkable that if it's not representative of the band's other songs, then I don't know why this track was chosen as the sample.

I went through a post-rock phase once upon a time and I adored Don Caballero at one point, but I'm just not feeling this. As far as instrumental bands with short songs, I much prefer Ratatat or Lightning Bolt. You can check it out for yourself.

Bat for Lashes

2010-09-15T19:48:00.004-04:00

The hype machine was pretty fervid when Natasha Khan's Bats for Lashes dropped Two Suns early last year. But like most Next Big Things in the ipod era, it quickly quieted when the Next Big Thing came along the following week. I downloaded a bunch of Bats for Lashes tracks during her 15 minutes of Pitchfork fame, gave them a few listens and while I certainly dug it, I never really went back to it. It's not that it's not bad; there's some terrific stuff here. She reminds me of a cross between the chamber pop of Portishead and the likable weirdness of Cat Power. You could probably also throw Tori Amos and Kate Bush in that melting pot as well, or basically any other female artist that ever seemed as too eccentric for the mainstream.

There's an interesting cover of Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" among these tracks and it led me to a thought. While the nicest thing I can say about Kings of Leon is that it's not really my thing, I admired the relative bravery in her covering a popular and contemporary song. It seems when a band covers a song, it's either a classic that they end up butchering, or a pissing contest to show off how obscure their cover choices are. So why don't bands cover more recent stuff? Dylan got covered all the time in his own time, and the Motown groups covered each other so often sometimes it's hard to know who recorded the song first. It seems blasphemous to cover Belle & Sebastian but couldn't a punk band go wild on "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying?" And why oh why hasn't a great rock-n-roll band tricked out "Hey Ya?" You would think it'd be ripe for interpretation. If this was 1969, every half-assed band in half the world would've recorded their own version by now.

And for the sake of duplicity, the Bat for Lashes songs in my ipod:

Volcano Choir - Unmap

2010-09-14T12:03:00.016-04:00

Release Date: September 22, 2009

I didn't realize I had Unmap until I stumbled upon it in my library last week. The play count registered “1” for each song and they were all unchecked -- I must've not cared much for it the first 'go-round. However I was intrigued being that I knew absolutely nothing about Volcano Choir, and so I reloaded it on the mp3 player and gave it another shot. “Husks and Shells” starts with trance-like acoustic guitars and computer blips, paving way for unmistakable falsetto vocals those of us who love Bon Iver know so well. For Emma, Forever Ago is already a modern folk classic, and Vernon’s vocals mesh beautifully with this ambient sort of electronic/alternative rock that Collections of Colonies of Bees create so well. It’s the sort of thing you might put on after a long, hallucinogenic-fueled night to come down to; Moby’s Play for the modern day hipster. But those days are long gone for me, and I don’t think I could ever find another time when I would spin a record such as this one. For those of you who still get to indulge: “Cool Knowledge” has a tight drum beat with some very interesting acapella-styled vocals and “Island, Is” is their most accessible and most enjoyable track.