As Cooper's second birthday looms, he's finally aged to the point where he has developed some bona fide opinions about music—or at least latched onto a few favorite songs. Being that this is a household that emphasizes songs the whole family can enjoy (while not wholly outlawing outright kids' music), the majority of the songs on this list are simply oldies for young'uns. These are the songs (especially of late) that Coop asks for by name, and/or can "sing" on request.
The Beach Boys: Barbara Ann The song we've probably been singing to him most consistently since he was born. He finally got in the habit of doing the "Ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba-aaan" on his own a month or so ago. Not counting his own made up songs, which constitute him saying "MOMMY" or "DADDY" in a high, meandering sing-songy voice, this is the first song Coop learned the words to.
Les Paul and Mary Ford: Bye Bye Blues It just so happens that "bye bye" and "blue" were both words in his vocabulary, so it became a joy for him to actually put the two together once he connected to this song. "No cry, no sigh" came along in direct response to this tune. He requests this song about 85 times daily.
The Playmates: Beep Beep (The Little Nash Rambler) Okay, if you don't have kids, or if you don't know it from when you were a kid, you're probably not going to stomach this song beyond one or two novelty listens. But let me assure you that it is THE HIT of the household right how.
Simon & Garfunkel: Leaves that are Green When Coop discovered the black circles inside the square packages lining our shelves, he was obliged to take them all out and spread them out on the floor. When he learned that if you put the black circles on the turntable, music came out, he was hooked. Now every day he says "records! records!" because he wants to see the magic happen. His favorite is "red record," aka Simon & Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence (which has a red label...as opposed the "yellow record," Electric Prunes' Mass in F Minor—of all records!). We skip the opening track and start it on "Leaves that are Green," a jaunty little tune all about growing old and dying.
The Free Design: Kites are Fun He learned about kites through The Cat in the Hat, in which Thing Two and Thing One have lots of good fun with a kite. So of course this resonated with him, for despite never having seen a kite in person, he knows that kites are fun. Unclear whether, when he says "Kites Fun!" he is requesting this song or requesting that book. Pretty sure it's the song.
Serge Gainsbourg: Comic Strip A late-breaking addition to the list—he just heard this song for the first time yesterday, but it was a huge hit. Choreography during the Brigitte Bardot parts went a long way.
The Kinks: David Watts Not unlike "Barbara Ann," Coop latched on to the "Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa-Fa-Fa" of this song.
Tennessee Ernie Ford: Sixteen Tons In truth I think Coop just likes this song because his mom and I have so much fun singing along to it. There was a day though where it was the only thing he wanted to listen to. Hope the lyrics are not a harbinger for his lot in life. Oh well, at least we can take comfort from Simon & Garfunkel that every life will eventually come to an end, even the hard ones.
Honorable mentions:
The Sesame Street version of Feist's "1234" is a huge favorite, not only because it includes counting to four, but also because there are monsters and penguins.
Everything on Tom T. Hall's Country Songs for Children is really terrific. Earlier this year someone released a tribute compilation to this album, but that seems totally unnecessary. Seek out the original (on Spotify, if nowhere else—that's where we listen to it).
Finally, a truly wonderful Sesame Street song from the 70s, "What's the Name of that Song?" There are actually a lot of great Sesame Street songs out there, old and new, but this one is the king in this house.
Putting together these monthly mixes has become one of my favorite things to do on Pretty Goes with Pretty. It's not like putting together a typical mix, which usually has some unifying theme. No, these are mixes made with strict rules:
all the songs were downloaded within the last month
all are new to me, and it should go without saying that I think they're all great
the mix is intended to be listened to straight through and should be a satisfying experience
(The fourth, til-now-unspoken rule is that each month's mix must also flow from last month's mix, because I keep a single mega-playlist of the year's mixes on my iTunes)
This sounds simple but in many months can be quite challenging. First, I'm letting my tastes dictate what must be included in the mix—whether it's country, soul, ambient, indie, whatever. Then I need to figure out how to make that all run in a way that seems natural. This month was probably the most challenging all year. I must have listened to these ten songs in varying orders for the last two weeks, before finally settling on this one tonight. It's probably not my most elegant mix, but I do like some of the weird juxtapositions, especially hearing the sound of the keyboard in Roedelius Schneider's "Single Boogie" echoed by the sound of the Equals' guitars).
Anyway, have at it: press play on song #1 and just let the rest go. Hope you enjoy. If you want to hear the other mixes I've done this year, click here and scroll through the various "Favorite Downloads" mixes.
I love my iTunes smart playlists, especially my "60s Best" group, which gathers every song in my library made between 1960 and 1969 that I've rated four or five stars. Currently that count sits at 1,280 songs. Of all my smart playlists this one most consistently turns in great mixes. I was playing it yesterday and it spun out this series of gems, including my favorite Donovan song and Hearts & Flowers' "Try for the Sun," which I realized on hearing last night might be one of my top five all-time favorite songs.
This month's favorite downloads skew toward songwriters, as opposed to electronica or ambient (though there's still a little of that too). As usual, this mix is best experienced in the order given. Starting this month I'm also going to begin sharing these mixes via Spotify (if they carry the songs), so follow me over there if you're on the site—my username is scottpgwp.
Credit where it's due: three of these tracks come courtesy of Rawkblog—Lia Ices and Chad VanGaalen come from the same mix that yielded the Little Scream track I mentioned yesterday, while the Geotic track came from this mix. I heard "Bells of Harlem" on the radio one night this month and immediately knew who it was, despite not knowing that Dave Rawlings ever put anything out under his own name. Coincidentally I came home that night and found a great introductory mix to Gillian Welch on tumblr, and it included this track. Also on tumblr, the always excellent Singing in the Wire posted a nice intro to Francoise Hardy. As for the rest: Acquarium Drunkard pointed out the Millenium track, the ever-dependable For the Sake of the Song posted the wonderful "Hello Sunshine," and my buddy Swan Fungus posted the Terry Riley track. Finally, I don't recall where I came across the Wooden Shjips track—it's from their new album.
Every month after I do my album rundown, I like to put together a mix of all my favorite random new-to-me downloads. Well, I guess I didn't spend much time surfing the blogs in May because it turns out I barely downloaded anything all month. So, here you go—four whole songs! (And a note re the Eleanor Friedberger song: what can I say? The chorus sucked me in too deep, I couldn't reject the song once the sax came in. I guess it's the exception to the rule.)
Unlike previous months most of my random downloads this month were older songs (and country, too). But there were a few 2011 tracks that snuck into my craw—My Morning Jacket's newest, which has me excited for their album coming out in a few weeks, and Matthew Cooper's "Expectation," a lovely ambient track. This mix is thus a little strange but is nevertheless meant to be listened to in order. Enjoy.
8:04 am: In the car on the way to hit some balls, Dick Clark's "rewind" Top 40 is on the radio—the week of August 14, 1965. The Ventures' theme to Hawaii 5-0 is #6, followed by #5 Tom Jones' "What's New Pussycat?", #4 Herman's Hermits' "I am Henry the EighthI Am", #3 Gary Lewis and the Playboys' "Save Your Heart for Me", #2 the Rolling Stones "Satisfaction". I arrive to the courts before I hear what #1 is.
11:30 am: Back at home, both my son and my wife are sleeping, so I have a brief moment of time alone, which I spend writing while listening to For the Sake of the Song's Wild Weekend playlist. (Bookmark that blog if you don't already - Ramone's always got great playlists.)
12:00 pm: I try streaming Low's C'mon when it occurs to me that a week has gone by and I still haven't heard it in full. Once again, however, I'm interrupted around track 4 or 5—Coop is awake.
1:28 pm: Driving with wife and boy to Versailles for lunch. B.o.B. on the radio and some other pop songs I don't recognize.
2:33 pm: More pop radio as we drive from Culver City to Venice. I finally get sick of it and ask my brilliant wife to put something on. She chooses the Radio Dept.'s Clinging to a Scheme but we only make it two tracks before we arrive to our destination.
3:15 pm: Standing in line at Intelligentsia on Abbott Kinney, Broken Social Scene's most recent album is on. We hear probably five songs in the time it takes to wait in line, then wait for our coffees to be made. Over the course of the next couple of hours as we browse in various stores we hear Dave Matthews Band, Maroon 5, Fleet Foxes, the Cure, and the Smiths. Possibly other things but if we did they didn't register.
5:00 pm: Driving home, we finish out the Radio Dept. album. Once home I wake up the computer and see the NPR Player still open, so I play Paul Simon's So Beautiful or So What. When it's finished, C'mon starts playing and I finally hear the album in full! Though I'm also giving Coop a bath and reading him stories so I don't totally process what I'm hearing. He's become very insistent about stories. He picks the book he wants to hear, walks over, puts it in my hand, then climbs right into my lap. There's no arguing with him.
7:16 pm: After putting Coop to bed, and while wife is out running an errand, I finish off the NPR trifecta and stream Panda Bear's newest. I still think "Last Night at the Jetty" is one of PB's best songs—it's got three different hook-filled choruses in a row, after all—but overall Tomboy is really monotonous. I've never been hot on the entirety of Person Pitch either, but that album seemed to stretch out in different places. Noah Lennox's multilayered vocals are ever-present on Tomboy. It becomes suffocating after a while.
9:15 pm: Spoon is on Austin City Limits. Man, Spoon. No other band working today has as confident a hold on their sound while at the same time never sacrificing quality songs. They somehow manage to be cutting edge and traditional at the same time. Part of that is because everyone in Spoon is clearly a serious musician—a thinking musician. Song for song they know which instruments, chords, and notes to use, which not to use, which they could use but needn't. It's dazzling to hear and to watch. No band of at least the last five years is as smart or as sophisticated as these guys. Watching them on ACL unintentionally makes me think of Tomboy as total amateur hour. Spoon's restraint and subtlety underscore everything that irritates me about Panda Bear—it's too piled on, all the time. It's as if Noah Lennox identified all of his weaknesses as a singer and a musician and found a way to mask them with sonics; whereas Spoon, if they ever had any weaknesses in the first place, simply removed them, replacing them with air and silence.
I'd intended this as a complement to my albums rundown from last week but was waylaid in getting it together. As I hope to do every month, here is a mix of my favorite individual tracks, old and new, I came across in the last month (or, in this case, going back to mid-December). The majority of these tracks came from a handful of other people's mixes—namely The Decibel Tolls and Swan Fungus, as well the Mindbending Motorway Mix created by Broadcast's Trish Keenan, which went around the internet after news of her untimely passing hit. The last track, which kinda sticks out from the rest of the mix but I think makes a nice ending to the whole thing if you listen to it straight through, came from Rawkblog.
Here's a mix of eight great songs from eight great albums that were new to me in 2010. As is plain to see, this was the year I caught up with krautrock in a big way. Aside from the five German acts here, I picked up an armload of others. The stuff that stuck with me the most (this year) were the more electronic/ambient acts associated with the genre. Right in the middle is a track from Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden—an album credited with inspiring the phrase "post-rock" prior to it being associated with Slint; in writing my book I felt duty-bound to finally hear this record, and I'm glad I did. It's terrific. The mix is bookended by two artists whose ouevres I've been consuming with great patience. I like the delayed gratification of knowing more amazing albums are still in my future. Expect to keep seeing Nilsson and Eno pop up in these parts.
Ever since I wrote it, I've been thinking about the way I framed my recent Walkmen post:
Compelling frontmen with strong voices and a grasp of emotional and lyrical nuance are a rare breed in indie rock, a genre that has typically favored effacing the lead vocal through reverb, distortion, a low mix, nonsensical lyrics, or an enigmatic personality for the better part of twenty-five or thirty years.
This line of thought has stuck in my craw for a few reasons, none of which relate to the Walkmen. First, I grant that it's too broad a statement. There are plenty of dynamic and compelling singers in indie rock. Nevertheless indie—I'm using this term as an umbrella for a lot of sub-genres—seems to have more than its share of bands who use an obscured or effaced vocal as part of its aesthetic. (It's also more than indie: contemporary hip hop has been big on obscuring vocals via vocoder for a few years now.)
But as common as it is—as pervasive as it is—I don't find many people thinking of obscured vocals as an aesthetic that has been passed down through decades of music (beyond referencing shoegaze and leaving it at that). Compare to the way critics might analyze, say, harmony—an utterly fundamental element of songwriting, yet something that can be placed within different traditions. This band harmonizes like the Beach Boys, that band like the Beatles, those guys like the Everly Brothers. This act is influenced by doo-wop, that act by choral music. Three-part, four-part, fifths, thirds. Obscured vocals, on the other hand, don't seem to be thought of as being part of a tradition—or, I should say, the tradition has not been formalized or canonized.
There are some obvious touchstones, of course: the Jesus and Mary Chain, Galaxie 500, My Bloody Valentine, the entire shoegaze genre. But I don't think it's that narrow. Nor does it get at the many ways in which bands might choose to blur or subvert their vocals—extra reverb being only one avenue to travel. For instance, I was thinking similarly about the anti-frontman, low mixes (and/or the lo-fi aesthetic), and spoken word as I was writing my Spiderland book. That too is part of the larger tradition in indie rock of obscuring the lead vocal. It's one part studio affectation, one part anti-rock-star persona.
I've been mulling this over for a couple of weeks or so now, digging through my collection and my memory in search of some kind of thread, trying to discover how this aesthetic developed. Clearly it's a pandora's box: I came up with a good 50 or 60 songs stretching back to the 1960s, and that's just what's in my own collection. In fact the whole project has become so overwhelming to me that I'm almost ready to throw up my hands; I was looking for trees but by now all I see is forest.
This is something I'll probably be thinking about for a long time going forward, and may revisit here or elsewhere in a bigger way. But for now I just want to throw the idea out there in hopes some of you readers might think about it too.
Rather than tackle the big picture in one blog post, I'd rather start with a few antecedents as examples of the various threads I have winding through my mind, in some attempt to hone in on this aesthetic and how it has evolved from an experimental recording technique into full-blown musical genres (plural!). Am I forgetting anything? Let me know in the comments.
Reverb has been a staple of the studio for decades, and in fact dates even further back to the natural echo supplied by singing in cathedrals or opera houses. It's used on about a million classic songs, so it's hard to say what was the turning point from an artificial studio effect that took away some of the dryness of a cold microphone to its use in a more extreme fashion. These are three songs by acts who didn't regularly indulge the echo, but the effect clearly impacts the loveliness of these individual songs.
There are countless ways in which the Velvet Underground were the anti-Beatles and the anti-Stones, and Lou Reed's whole persona as a frontman is definitely one of them. Reed's New York cool was tough and stylish, but it didn't swagger like Jagger or preen like McCartney. Reed's vocals had their hooks and melodies, but they also sometimes veered toward monologue. His voice was also sometimes subsumed by the music; cacophony was often the point for VU songs, and Reed's voice is kept low in the mix (relative to, say, Mick Jagger always front and center). It's an approach that has had a long-lasting influence on countless bands who willingly reject the cliche Rock Star persona and its flamboyant lead singer, to the point that being an anti-rock star is just as much of a cliche.
Around the same time as the VU, the so-called "cosmic music" movement coalescing in Germany was exploring all variety of ways to break down the traditional song form. Repetition and improvisation were major components for all of these krautrock bands, many of whom were instrumental. Can was not. "Yoo Doo Right," from Monster Movie, their first official album and the only one to feature U.S. transplant Malcolm Mooney on vocals, is a 20-minute, side-long epic; it's rhythmic, hypnotic, and constantly forward-moving. Mooney's voice, like Reed's in "The Black Angel's Death Song," is usually equal in the mix to the other instruments, only occasionally reaching above the fray. His repetitive lyrics and melody become just as mesmerizing as the rhythms and the guitar textures.
"Texture" is a key word. It's not surprising that many of the bands and genres that would later embrace effaced vocals are also musically spacious and atmospheric. The Silver Apples are probably the first space rock band (if that's different from cosmic music); the music they made was vast and otherworldly, helped along by Simeon's massive synthesizer set-up and Dan Taylor's steady but unobtrusive drumming. Though the duo didn't exactly treat their voices with effects, their near-monotone harmonies were layered over every song. Each track on their debut album seems like a variation on the same idea. Their twin vocals ultimately fold into the atmosphere of the overall album.
As far as I can tell the first use of distorted vocals wasn't acheived through adding a special effect, but rather by simply pushing the recording levels into the red. Garage acts like the Sonics were loud and raucous, and if that meant screaming at full lung a little too close to the microphone, so be it. Push the needles into the red—that's how you know they're not fucking around!
How does this all lead to chillwave and Grizzly Bear and Radio Dept. and the myriad bands today cluttering the indie landscape (for better or worse)? It's a long and winding road, to be sure. To me it seems a fascinating road to travel, even if at times it borders on something so pervasive as to be mundane. At any rate this is something I'll likely return to in future posts (famous last words, I know). If any of you out there have your own theories or input or know of others who have already traced this trajectory, let me know!
Usually around the three-month mark of the year I do my quarterly listening report. Well, I totally missed that one this time around. Been busy, as you might suspect. I do hope to do some kind of roundup, maybe not as detailed as usual.
Meanwhile I've been a whole lot less interested in what I'm listening to and a whole lot more interested in what Cooper's listening to. He's three months old, as of Thursday. So perhaps we ought to do a different kind of quarterly report.
As best I can tell, Coop's favorite song of ALL TIME is the theme to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. He gets immeasurable pleasure when I sing it to him, and lately has tried his hand at singing along. He's got the words right; all he lacks is rhythm and tunefulness.
For a while there Coop's fussier moments were alleviated by my singing the Lovin' Spoonful's "Rain on the Roof" or the Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love." Lately though one of us, I'm not sure who, has grown tired of those songs.
Coop's latest favorite—rivaling the Morricone—is Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer." We discovered this when some moaner on American Idol took it upon himself to butcher the song into a kind of tortured Nickleballad. Still, the Idol version did enough to put the song in our heads and we started singing it to Cooper. He seems to especially like it when we simulate the booming drums in between all the "Lie-la-lie"s.
We've got an unspoken rule—actually we've spoken this rule a couple of times—that we don't really want to subject ourselves to actual children's music until we absolutely must. And yet we both skirt that rule in strangely contrarian ways. My wife likes to sing "Surfin' Bird," which is stupidly hypnotic and ever repeating and usually hilarious. I like to sing "Witch Doctor" ("Ooh-eee, ooh-ah-ah, ting-tang, walla-walla bing bang"). Somehow these songs are more palatable than Old McDonald.
Then there are all the fragments of songs and stray lines that seem to crop up with some frequency. When he has gas I like get all Fugee and say "How many farts do we rip on the daily?". When he's got a particularly dirty diaper my Baha Wife inevitably asks "Who let the poops out? Coop, Coop, Coop." When he's being kind of a punk I tell him he's getting "buddy buddy buddy all up in my face."
I had turned the stereo off but was still thinking about Big Star. "What about 'The Ballad of El Goodo'? What about 'Big Black Car'? What about their beautiful cover of 'Femme Fatale'?" Etc. Thinking of all their songs and how great they are. "What about 'Candy'?" Then I did a mental double-take; wait, "Candy" is a Byrds song. It comes from Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde, possibly the worst Byrds album though still possessing a few redeeming songs.
Part of the reason it's such a weird Byrds album is because it's the only Byrds album where Roger McGuinn really steps all the way into the spotlight. This was the first album to feature a totally new lineup, no original members other than McGuinn, and it was also rushed—they hit the studio not long after forming. So McGuinn took the lead and the harmonies that had become synonymous with the Byrds were pretty much absent. One of the surprising secrets of the Byrds is that McGuinn was not actually that great of a singer. His voice, when it's not buried in a three-part harmony, is a little shaky and strained. He sings in a very tentative falsetto—very similar to Alex Chilton's singing style. (McGuinn's biggest strength was also in arranging other people's covers, something Chilton would receive a lot of credit for later in his own career.)
There's a kind of awkwardness to Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde thanks to McGuinn's performance and the constant shifting between country-influenced songs and rockers, in both cases the band playing fairly unpolished (by Byrds standards) under fairly plain, sometimes cold production. Listening to some of these songs in the context of thinking about Big Star, the record starts to take on a kind of proto-Chilton sheen.
My priorities this year were so far from keeping up with new releases that I've totally failed at coming up with a respectable best-of list—one comprised of actual 2009 releases, that is. I probably could have come up with eight or ten new albums I heard this year that I liked, or that were solid (see last week's post for recommendations of that nature.) But I can't bring myself to make that kind of list. This is something I went on about last year, but my simple stance is that an end-of-year list should be as long as the quality of records dictates it should be. So, if I were to do a list that only included 09 albums, I'd have a top two, maybe a top three. That seemed insufficient as far as a worthwhile blog post goes. So this year I'll dispense with the 09 list and the rundown of favorite old stuff and just jump straight to my own personal favorite acquisitions of the year. I've neglected to include mp3s this time around because all of these acts are going to show up in my playlist post tomorrow (75 songs!). If you're especially eager to hear any of these bands, however, I encourage you to click on the categories at the end of this post; somewhere or other on this blog I have done mp3s for all of these before.
Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion Merriweather Post Pavilion is such a transcendent success because it works on the two most essential levels: one, it's a riveting album if for no other reason than its sound—the samples, the harmonies, the songs' cohesiveness, all adding up to something greater than the sum. But two, it's also just a straight-up jam. It's just a fucking fun record to play! "My Girls," "Summertime Clothes," "Brothersport" (especially the big instrumental ravey moment toward the end)... these songs appeal to the head-nodder, the car-dancer, the occasional funky boss that I am. Avey Tare and Panda Bear's voices blend with each other and with the music itself, creating a kind of sonic morass with a shining pop core—it's like the aural equivalent of looking at a searchlight in deep fog: ominous yet comforting. MPP weaves its thread through foreboding numbers like "Almost Frightened," through romantic sentiments like "Bluish," through flirtations with the abstract in "Daily Routine," yet remains compelling and, again, simply pleasurable, throughout. At this point I'm exhausted by talking about this band at all—praising them, defending them, parsing them, dissecting them. Then again this album isn't really for talking about—at its core, no classic album is. It's just for putting on and feeling in your gut that it's incredible.
Faust: Faust IV Did I really only pick this album up this year? I guess I did—I bought it right around Christmas 2008. But man, it feels like I've known this album forever. I prefer that lie; otherwise I'd have to feel the ache of knowing that I'd made it to my third decade without this in my life. (Confidential to all Animal Collective fans: I've said this before but will reiterate that I find Faust to be a kind of spiritual ancestor to AC—they have a similar blend of seriousness and playfulness, of accessibility and experimentation, of genre jumping and genre defining. You owe it to yourself to dig up at least one of AC's roots by getting this album.)
Dr. Dog: Fate Wait: Fate was on my 2008 list! I know. It was my fifth favorite album of last year. But it deserves a second shout-out because I think I wound up listening to it more this year than last. If I were to remake last year's list, this would be #1. Unlike the top two on the present list there is nothing remotely experimental about Fate; it happily, confidently blends an adoration for the Band and other classic rock acts, all of whom you've heard of before. The album is also structured like a conversation, with main songwriters Toby Leaman and Scott McMicken trading tunes back and forth, each grappling with themes of religion, free will, and yes, fate. By the end of the album you almost feel like they might have even reached a healthy conclusion. Fate is a smart, compelling album—and it's become an essential part of any road trip or pick-me-up playlist.
Neko Case: Middle Cyclone Neko Case made the best record of her career. It can be hard to settle in with—most of the tracks on Middle Cyclone are aching ballads, and it can feel monotonous during the first few times through—but once the record clicks, those aches are your aches. As with the Dr. Dog record, Middle Cyclone mostly sinks its teeth into a lyrical theme—bad romance—in which each song adds a level of depth to all of the others. You hurt for the woman in "Pharoahs" in part because you already felt for the narrator of "Middle Cyclone." You worry for the person behind "This Tornado Loves You" after you meet the protagonist of "The Next Time You Say Forever." And so on. It's not all like this: "Prison Girls" is some hot noir; "Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth" is just a powerhouse (and a little nuts); and I'm not going to say no to a Harry Nilsson cover ("Don't Forget Me"). Neko Case made the best record of her career—did I say that already?
The Byrds: Ballad of Easy Rider Dillard & Clark: The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark These two albums came out in the same year, 1969, and they make a good pair. Easy Rider is the second Byrds album to feature Roger McGuinn and a bunch of guys who weren't original members (and it's also an excellent country record that is as good as Sweetheart of the Rodeo, maybe better). Fantastic Expedition, meanwhile, features three ex-Byrds in Gene Clark, Chris Hillman, and Michael Clarke (and is also an excellent country record that is as good as Sweetheart of the Rodeo, maybe better).
Animal Collective: Sung Tongs What can I say? This one was new to me this year. (Richard, after so many conversations in my comments about the merits of Sung Tongs, I hope you feel vindicated that this album has risen in my esteem with every passing month.) Yeah, I still like MPP more, but the allure of this record is so different it's difficult to compare. MPP is immediate; the melodies of Sung Tongs burrow. The rhythms of Sung Tongs waft past you if you let them, but they're not aimless. (And to my surprise it was produced by a kid I knew in high school!)
The Feelies: Crazy Rhythms See last week. I still love it.
It's been a slow three months for new-to-me music consumption, capping what feels like a low-consumption year. I'll have a little more on my personal year in review soon, but in the meantime I thought I'd wrap up my quarterly MLH post so as not to obscure these eight albums amidst a longer list.
In a year where I didn't spend a whole lot of time keeping up with the newest releases, I tried my best to catch up on at least a few 09 albums I'd been meaning to get. The good news is that most of these records delivered! More or less! If I were giving letter grades, most here would receive a B or B+. I'm going to dispense with the week-long MLH post this time around since I have more year-in-review posts in the works. Without further ado, here's the rundown, in the order they were acquired:
The Feelies: Crazy Rhythms Earlier this year I fell into a small Galaxie 500 hole, re-buying both Today and On Fire, reminding myself how great that band is after many, many years of forgetting about them. As part of that revival I bought and devoured Dean Wareham's memoir, Black Postcards, in which he spent a lot of time waxing on the Feelies as a big influence on him in his teen and college years. In a nice confluence of events, the Feelies catalogue was reissued at the exact same time, so I took it as the sign that I should finally put these guys at the top of my priority list. Glad I did.
Like Galaxie 500's albums, it takes a number of listens before the songs on Crazy Rhythms begin to differentiate themselves from one another. Each track features an airtight rhythm section and the same kind of raw unadorned guitar tone that was favored by many other late-70s bands. It reminds me of a less dancey Talking Heads or less syncopated Devo—it's hard not to think of Devo's "Satisfaction" when hearing the Feelies' "Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Except for Me and My Monkey)." A further distinction from those two bands might be that Glenn Mercer's vocals are far less dynamic than David Byrne or Mark Mothersbaugh. No matter: the songs on Crazy Rhythms are so hypnotic—yet so fun—that a manic vocalist might just get in the way.
John Vanderslice: Romanian Names I met John Vanderslice a long time ago, back when his first album, Time Travel is Lonely, came out. At the time I booked shows in Arizona. He was a nice guy, the album was great, and the show was great! Yet, eight years later, I never really did keep up with his output (though I'd heard raves from a few different quarters). On the recommendation of Rawkblog I checked out "Too Much Time," a melancholy bit of electroni-pop that has since become one of my favorite songs of the year. Though the electronics crop up here and there on Romanian Names, for the most part the rest of the album is much more guitar-oriented; the first half of the record is full of great indie pop—"Fetal Horses," and "D.I.A.L.O.," for instance. Moving into the second half things start to slow down, delving into more atmospheric and fragmented material. I appreciate the move into a different territory, though it never quite gets me in the gut. At any rate the album is solid overall. And I must admit a strange affinity to "Fetal Horses" after many weeks of feeling baby pgwp doing somersaults in my brilliant wife's belly. If it's true that fetal horses gallop in the womb, let's all be glad baby boys just kick a little.
Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix Who expected Phoenix to make the best album of their career this year? Not me. It's not a perfect album—a few of the tracks on the second half feel a little too similar to "Lisztomenia" and "1901," as if the band decided to just start over on side two—but for those two singles and the apex that is the two-part "Love Like a Sunset," Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix has been a great antidote to my recent listening slump. It's actually that latter track, the mostly instrumental centerpiece to the album, that has become the highlight for me. It spins WAP into a different place—somewhere more expansive, less pop-oriented. In fact, its epic quality is what sabotages the album's second half. When the band starts up again with "Lasso," featuring a vocal melody we've already heard a couple times in the first part of the record, you start to wonder if Phoenix only has two tricks up their sleeves and "Sunset" was just a fortunate case of lightning in a bottle. I like all the songs on the second half of the record, it's just that I want them to deliver more. The band hints at an escalation but then fails to escalate.
Kings of Convenience: Declaration of Dependence If I have to wait five years for every Kings of Convenience album, only to discover with each release that the duo basically refuses to develop their sound beyond that of their debut, 1999's Quiet is the New Loud... well, that's actually totally okay with me. With their third record, Kings of Convenience have turned in something about as surprising as Thanksgiving dinner. And I don't really have a problem with that; I'll take Erland Oye and Eirik Glambek Boe's eerily similar harmonizing voices and simply strummed acoustic guitars about as readily as I'll take a turkey breast and mashed potatoes. The first half of Declaration in particular—"Mrs. Cold," "Me in You," "Boat Behind"—is as good as the best material on either of their other albums. As of now I still find myself distracted by the time I get to the album's second half; the songs get quieter, darker, and a little less distinct. But the first half is so enjoyable that I continue to return to the record in hopes that the later songs' pleasures will reveal themselves in time.
(I'll be the first to note the vaguely positive reaction to this record vs the vaguely negative reaction to Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, despite that I feel both records have incredibly strong first halves and somewhat indistinct second halves... I think it comes back to that idea of "hinting at escalation"; Phoenix points toward a more varied record and then backs away, while the Kings of Convenience rather staunchly remain in a single musical domain. Heck, you might even say they spell it out in their album title.)
The Fiery Furnaces: I'm Going Away Had I segmented this quarter's haul into my usual best/rest categories, I'm Going Away might have been the only record to wind up on the "rest" side of things. There are other records here that are more predictable than the Fiery Furnaces' latest, but that's not the same as saying they're more disappointing. I give this band a lot of credit for refusing to stagnate, to constantly needle their audience; but with their premeditated irritation comes the risk that fans (or I, at least) won't always want to stay on board. Widow City, their last album and my first exposure them, is one of my favorite albums of recent years—it's confrontational, idiosyncratic, funny, and smart. I'm Going Away is all of those things as well, just less fun to listen to. The new record depends more on piano, less on guitar; more on blues progressions, less on the proggy compositions that fired up so much of Widow City. That's not to say I'm Going Away is without its merits—songs like "Even in the Rain" still burrow into my head whether I want them to or not—it's just not, overall, quite the flavor I was hoping to taste.
Dillard & Clark: The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark After a couple false starts with getting into Gene Clark's solo material, I've finally hit upon the excellence I knew he was capable of. For his first of two collaborations with Doug Dillard, Clark hit on a modest but wonderful country/rock hybrid. There is something almost ego-less about the material here; the songs are simply good, aspiring to nothing more or less pure than that goal. Opener "Out on the Side" is one of the best songs Clark has ever written; his lead vocal aches while the backing harmonies, supplied by Dillard and former Byrd bandmate Chris Hillman, buoy the song beautifully. Those same harmonies—they're not as otherworldly as David Crosby's contributions to the Byrds, nor as steady as the Gosdin Brothers' contributions to Clark's first solo effort—lift many of the other tracks, like the gospel of "Git it on Brother" or the skillful "Train Leaves Here This Morning" and "With Care from Someone." Fantastic Expedition is just that—a fantastic expedition—and belongs in any collection that already includes records like The Notorious Byrd Brothers, The Gilded Palace of Sin, or American Beauty.
Animal Collective: Fall Be Kind Between Merriweather Post Pavilion—my favorite album of the year—and Sung Tongs, which was new to me this year, 2009 could be characterized as my year of Animal Collective (if it weren't already my year of Slint). It's fitting that one of the last new releases I'll pick up this year is this EP—sort of a little bow to tie it all up. And that's really how I perceive Fall Be Kind: not the latest statement from the almighty Animal Collective, but a nice capper, a stocking stuffer. The EP holds together as a cohesive, twenty-something-minute piece. It's spacier, less rhythmic than MPP, yet less playful than something like Sung Tongs and less meandering than parts of Feels. Have I placed it on the Animal Collective Map yet? Anyway, you either already have this and hold your own opinions or you could give two shits. I like it.
Tortoise: Beacons of Ancestorship The very fact of a new Tortoise album this year spurred me to revisit their whole catalogue earlier this year, though I didn't finally get to Beacons of Ancestorship until just a few weeks ago. After being away from Tortoise for most of this decade, it's been nice to welcome them back to rotation. All of their albums stand up to close listening—they're impeccably produced and impeccably played—and they also work well as non-distracting "work" music. That's slightly different from "background music" in that even as a Tortoise album can stay out of your way, it still finds a way to inspire—to subtly, perhaps subconsciously, spur you to concentrate and excel at whatever it is you're doing.
That's a nice way of talking around the quality of Beacons of Ancestorship. At this point I feel about Tortoise approximately the same way I feel about the Kings of Convenience: every few years this group is going to get together and make a record that sounds more or less like the last one. If your expectations are properly adjusted, everything's cool. Ever since solidifying their lineup around the time of TNT, Tortoise has consistently created their trademarked brand of electronica/jazz/film score hybrid. I don't really have any complaint with adding such an album to my collection every few years, so if that's what Tortoise wants to do then that's what I'll take. I can't say there isn't a part of me that wishes they'd take more risks, push themselves as composers and/or improvisers, just be more adventurous. Do people remember or realize that fifteen years ago people talked about Tortoise the way people talk about Animal Collective now? The exuberance—the expectation—that surrounded a Tortoise or Tortoise-related release was pretty fucking high. For whatever reason the group settled into a comfortable place and, starting around the time of Standards, have tempered all of those expectations. It's sort of a bummer, but it also doesn't suck completely. Tortoise have become dependable, for all the good and bad that goes with that word.
Andrew Bird, Weather Systems An Andrew Bird album that doesn't fall in the "best" category? It's hard for me to believe too. I bought Weather Systems while in a bit of a listening funk—wanting something new but not wanting anything in particular. So my ambivalent state of mind might have had something to do with my failure to really latch onto the record. Or maybe it's because I've been listening to Bird pretty consistently since early 2007 and that's just a lot of Bird to listen to. Or maybe it's because Weather Systems feel largely like a sketchbook. Bird has claimed that he made this record as a repository for the overflow of ideas he had while making The Mysterious Production of Eggs (which came out one or two years after Weather Systems), which means even when it was released it wasn't the album he was most concerned with. It shows, especially in retrospect, that much of this album might have been released into the world prematurely. Both "I" and "Skin" would turn up again on subsequent albums much more fleshed out ("Imitosis" on Armchair Apocrypha and "Skin Is My" on Eggs). Here they feel unfinished, both in terms of their composition and Bird's lyrics and vocals ("Skin" is instrumental here and "I" finds Bird repeating the same four lines over and over). Though there are a handful of fully completed songs that match up against the best of Bird's other albums ("Lull" and "First Song" especially), others are more ponderous exercises that seem like they'd be fun to play, maybe even fun to see live, but not as compelling to listen to on record.
Gene Clark, Echoes The first Gene Clark solo album I ever bought was No Other, from 1974. It had a few nice spots but for my tastes was a little too bloated, too MOR, and not at all close to his work with the Byrds ten years earlier. Not giving up on Clark's solo material, I told myself I just needed to start from the beginning, with Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers. At least a year has gone by since that decision. I've checked the bin at the record store with some frequency but the album has never been in stock. Then I realized Echoes (available on eMusic) is the first album plus a mini-album's worth of bonus tracks. I downloaded it! Then I found out it's actually not quite the same as the original album; it's a different mix, largely the same as the original but pushing Clark's voice a little further up in the mix so he feels like the leader and not equal to the Godsins. I'm always a little suspicious of people messing with the original versions of albums, and hearing the original mix of "Keep on Pushin'" bears this out. It's a subtle enough difference but the Echoes version is the lesser version. So now I have a hard time listening to Echoes at all because I feel like I'm hearing the wrong album. It is perhaps an overreaction but it's how I feel.
Gene Clark: Keep On Pushin' (from Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers)
Engineers, Three Fact Fader I have no idea who Engineers are—where they’re from, whether this is their debut or not, how many people are in the band, etc. Nothing. My wife just brought the album home one day, on loan from a friend. So, with zero expectations going in I can say I enjoy Three Fact Finder. It’s vaguely My Bloody Valentine-y—not as warped or dense but it is hazy and at times ethereal. I hear shoegaze, I hear a little electronica in there, a little modern-day indie. All that is great and it adds up to an album I like putting on and never feel the urge to skip through. That said, four or five listens in and I still only really notice maybe two songs. So Three Fact Finder falls into that dastardly category of “great background music.” I love writing or otherwise working to it; just don’t really feel compelled to listen to it. Recommended with caveat.
Joel Alme, A Master of Ceremonies Purchasing this album was a direct result of my brilliant wife wanting the Ida Maria record. We started talking about the water up there in Sweden, and how those who drink it magically gain the utmost pop songwriting skills. This reminded me that I'd been meaning to hear more from Swede Joel Alme. His song "The Seven Islands," from this album, was one of my favorite songs of 2008, but I'd never gotten around to picking up the full length until recently. While I haven't had the album for too long, I do find that the rest of the record is not as good as that song. Alme's got a bit of a Will Sheff thing going—moany, not much of an indoor voice—which is fine, though at times it makes me just want to listen to Okkervil River. That might be too harsh, too reductive—A Master of Ceremonies is still a good album, still growing on me.
Ida Maria: Fortress 'round My Heart Due to details too mundane to enumerate, I can only listen to this album in the car, and I'm rarely in the car long enough to hear an album all the way through. It seems to work for Ida Maria, though. This album feels very single-oriented—every song great fun, hanging its hat on each chorus. It doesn't feel to me like an album I'd normally buy, but it is fun.
Wye Oak: The Knot Once I wrote about this record I pretty much stopped listening to it. It’s not bad—and I like many of the songs when they come up on shuffle—but as I said in my original post, I just get antsy to hear the records The Knot reminds me of rather than The Knot itself (though "Tattoo" is still pretty terrific).
The Byrds: Ballad of Easy Rider This album has only grown in my estimation since I last wrote about it, to the point that it just might be among my three or four all-time favorite Byrds albums. Of their overtly country albums, I like this more than Sweetheart of the Rodeo. That said, it only ranks that high when I do a little re-jiggering to the track list—not exactly re-ordering things, but substituting here and there. Here’s my recommendation to you should you pick up the version of this album that comes with bonus tracks:
Ballad of Easy Rider Fido Oil in My Lamp [alternate take] Tulsa County [alternate take] Mae Jean Goes to Hollywood [bonus track] Jack Tarr the Sailor Jesus is Just Alright It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue There Must Be Someone I Can Turn To Gunga Din Way Behind the Sun [bonus track] Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins
The Fall, Hex Enduction Hour My first Fall album! I’ve always meant to dig into the Fall but have never really understood where to begin with their fairly impenetrable discography. This turned out to be an excellent recommendation and now I’ve got four more Fall records saved at eMusic for future consumption.
Harlem Shakes, Technicolor Health I think every six months or so I need one new catchy indie guitar pop album. Last year it was Vampire Weekend and Dr. Dog; the year before that it was Peter Bjorn & John and the New Pornographers; and before that the Little Ones and I can't remember who else. But the thing is, I can't have too many of these kind of bands at once. I just want to sink my teeth into one and revel in all the melodies and harmonies and bouncey rhythms. So right now it's the Harlem Shakes (who, unfortunately, just broke up). Technicolor Health is one of those albums that had, on one listen, one outstanding song and the rest solid but hard to discern from each other. And with each listen that ratio shifts in the other direction. As of today I think it's about 50/50, and I feel optimistic that it'll continue to turn since there are no out and out duds to be found. It's just a terrific little record.
Yo La Tengo, Popular Songs Despite thinking And Then Nothing Turned Inside Out is one of the best albums of the decade, Yo La Tengo is not a band I typically get excited about. I'm not totally sure why that's the case. At any rate, Popular Songs magically came into my house through no effort on my part. What was I to do but put it on? It's not on the same level as And Then Nothing... (not even close, really), but it's good. Good enough to underline how irrational my relationship to Yo La Tengo has been all these years. All of the shorter songs—the first two thirds of the record—are great, with at least a couple of truly fantastic tracks (like the opener, "Here to Fall" or the fun duet "If It's True"). Things kind of drift off the rails with the last three tracks, each around ten minutes or longer. Any of them would've made a good closer, but all three feel like overkill, especially in light of how effervescent the preceding tracks are. I'd imagine that Popular Songs might work better on vinyl, where each side of the record could show off its own personality. Played straight through, it puts a drag on an otherwise pretty solid album. But the first nine songs are enough to make this an album I continue to return to.
Cass McCombs, Catacombs Though I still stand by everything I said in my original review of the album, Catacombs has stalled for me. I don’t know if I just wrote it out of my system or if I simply acquired too many new albums since then, but it’s fallen out of rotation. When I consider putting it on I reflexively think “that record’s a bit of a slog,” but if I do put it on, or if the songs come up on shuffle, I get way into it. So, mixed feelings but a good record nonetheless.When I bring my self to listen to it, I remember that it's one of the better 09 albums I've heard thus far.
Tucked into yesterday's post you might have noticed a little announcement: the pgwp household is expanding. Starting in late January my listening hours are going to shift from krautrock to Kidz Bop.
So if you're keeping score at home, that means I need to finish writing a book (including, hopefully, a trip to Louisville), move into a new place, and otherwise prepare for a kid, all in the next six months or so (oh yeah, and work that pesky full-time job). Stressed? Me? Nah...
Well, seriously, okay, a little. But more so I'm just excited. Bearing in mind that my prior experience in handling infants is 100% theoretical (I did hold one once... once), I have a lot of visions of the days following baby pgwp's arrival. Nearly all of them involve me singing my favorite songs to it. (Optimistically, none of my visions feature tantrums or foul odors.)
Since learning of the impending event, I've had a little checkbox in the back of my mind every time a song comes on—could this work as a lullabye if I sang it softly enough? I mean, I can't drive myself crazy singing "Rock-a-bye Baby" to a tiny being who doesn't understand what I'm talking about anyway, right? The only question, it seems to me, is whether the melody has the right effect. Music-obsessive parents in the audience, feel free to share your wisdom on this front. What are/were some of your favorite non-nursery-rhyme lullabys? I'm forming an untenably long list in my head (and in an iTunes playlist, of course) of any and all contenders. Here's the tip of the iceberg:
Today I gave my brilliant wife a ride to work. She works on the west side and has to be in early in the morning—by 6 am. Once I dropped her off I couldn't resist stopping by the beach since I was so close and had plenty of time to kill.
The beach in the early morning is probably my favorite thing about Los Angeles (rivaled only by the beach in winter, at any time of day). The air is cool, barely anyone is around, and the light is perfect—the sky almost blends right into the sea. You're subsumed by these three expanses—the sky, the ocean, the vast beach, smoothed out by the now-receded tide and unsullied by people or their tracks. There's nowhere better to just sit and be silent. It was good for me.
On the way home I listened to Grizzly Bear's Vekatimest in the car. It was the closest I've ever come to connecting with this band. I don't know why I haven't, and honestly it flummoxes me that I can't. They've got all the ingredients that should go into my ideal band—beautiful harmonies, great atmospherics, an equal appreciation of 50s–60s pop and rock and contemporary art-rock, riding the fence between easy earworms and dramatic walls of sound. If I were to start a band today, it would probably sound a lot like Grizzly Bear. Yet I just cannot settle up to what they're serving. Too pretentious? Too self-conscious? Too quote-unquote arty? Maybe.
Sometimes you just need the right environment, mixed with the right mood, for a record to click. I came close this morning. I was feeling disconnected—from myself, from the world in front of my face. So maybe hearing a band who also strike me as disconnected—from me, perhaps from their own ability to hit on any kind of nuanced emotion amidst all their dramatic compositions—was the right thing. I floated on their harmonies, rode the waves of their ups and downs, felt oddly unsettled yet comforted by their borg-like lack of humanity. I was feeling just slightly alien, was just barely outside of my own body. I was feeling about myself the way I feel about Grizzly Bear. Disconnected.
On Saturday I was home alone, working on a freelance project, when I suddenly became distracted and started sifting through my iTunes to make a new playlist. I'm not sure what triggered it—maybe it was a Galaxie 500 song, or a Deerhunter track. I don't know. But I started scrolling through my library, pulling every song that "fit," though I wasn't really working with a theme. When I was done I had about forty tracks and the whole thing, I realized, resembled the first portion of this playlist, which I made last year. Here's how I described what I was drawn to at the time:
I'd find myself gravitating to a certain kind of music. It was hazy, hypnotic, gauzelike, perhaps with some percussive undercurrent. So, a lot of krautrock. Animal Collective's "For Reverend Green" fit the bill in a big way. Of course I wasn't in the mood for happy music, but I also wasn't in the mood for sad music. I wanted some sort of emotionless music. Something that could envelop me and keep the world on pause or at a distance.
Lately I've been drawn to that sound again. Perhaps not as propulsive, perhaps with less simmering tension. Something a little more numb. I don't know why.
I know why. It's not anything special—it's work stress. It's a feeling of not being productive enough outside of work. It's the feeling of hurtling through a busy year full of personal and professional hurdles. You know, the same shit everyone else goes through.
We watched (500) Days of Summer on Sunday. It was a great movie, recommended. There was a scene, though, where a line out of Zooey Deschanel's mouth had the accidental effect of reminding me of my dad. I went into a funk for the rest of the day and, as of today, haven't really risen out of it. I will, I will. There's enough wonderful things happening in my life right now that I will. But it's a strange feeling to be pulled—forcibly, imperceptibly—into a mood or mindset that you weren't expecting. No external event really triggered this. It's not his birthday, not father's day, not anything. I just felt a memory.
It's not really something to explain. I expect it will happen many times in the future, for the rest of my life. My brilliant wife asked me about it last night, asked if I wanted to talk about it. Well, no. There's not really anything to say—"I miss my dad." Okay. That's it and that's also hardly it. There are no words to articulate how I feel—there's only the search for the right song to connect to.
Ballad of Easy Rider was the Byrds’ eighth album, though released only four years after their first. It's shocking to really grasp how far they’d traveled in just four years! Not only was the band onto its fifth lineup iteration—Roger McGuinn being the sole original member—they had also progressed through nearly as many genres: folk rock, psychedelia, country.
Easy Rider was the second album in the Byrds’ “late” period, in which the band was made up of McGuinn, Clarence White, Gene Parsons, and John York. Their first foray was the (self-admitted) uneven Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, which was hurriedly put together and saw the band aiming in too many musical directions—an especially interesting thing to note considering McGuinn wrote, co-wrote, or arranged seven of Dr. Byrds’ ten songs and was the sole lead singer (unlike every other Byrds album).
Easy Rider is a far superior record, perhaps due to the band’s return to the fundamentals of how the old Byrds functioned: everybody wrote, everybody sang, and Bob Dylan’s name pops up in the songwriting credits a couple times. Though McGuinn took lead vocals on many of the tracks, he only wrote one song (with a little help from Dylan)—the stellar title track. And while none of the new Byrds were as distinct songwriters as Gene Clark, David Crosby, or Chris Hillman—nor as extraordinary at harmonizing as Crosby or Hillman—they still brought strong material. The album’s second half turns into a straight-up country record highlighted by a string of great tunes: “There Must Be Someone I Can Turn To,” “Gunga Din”—both featuring drummer Gene Parsons’s smooth tenor up front—and McGuinn’s other standout track, a cover of Woody Guthrie's “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).”
It’s these two Parsons tracks that really announce that this is a “new” Byrds—not a bunch of charlatans merely trying to cash in on other people's legacy. Much the same as when Gram Parsons (no relation) joined for Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Gene's is a voice that does not sound like “the Byrds.” It’s too deep, too smooth, too serene. The Byrdsian harmonies are not there to cushion it; you wouldn’t know it was the Byrds if I didn’t tell you. When Gram joined up for Sweetheart, the resulting sound rubbed me the wrong way. Though I love the record, it doesn’t feel like a “Byrds” album to me. The country sound there feels more like a costume—“We’re country!”—rather than an influence they absorbed into their own aesthetic, as on the more subtly layered Notorious Byrd Brothers or some of Hillman’s contributions to Younger than Yesterday. Yet when Gene takes the lead on Easy Rider, it doesn’t bother me the same way. Perhaps it’s simply due to the fact that by now I’m used to the idea of someone coming into the band and making them sound entirely different.
Of course, with Hillman now out of the band and McGuinn the only original member left, there’s nothing to do but expect something entirely different! I wonder how this lineup’s critical legacy would have been received if they had shed the Byrds moniker and branded themselves something else. While you can hear a few connections to the Byrds of the past—it feels like a more natural follow up to The Notorious Byrd Brothers than the two records in between—they really are a whole other beast. The twelve-string is by now long absent, the harmonies are still there but they’re no longer the defining element, and Clarence White’s clean country picking is all over the record, shifting a dynamic of the band’s sound to a totally different place. It's funny to think that this album outsold both Notorious and Sweetheart, yet today gets lumped in with the "late, no good stuff" that anyone other than hardcore fans pass right over. It's actually a pretty terrific album.
It’s worth noting, too, that the bonus tracks on the reissue make it even better. I’m usually not a big fan of extras like live cuts, studio outtakes, etc. I like processing a record for what it was, for what the band wanted you to hear. Most bonus tracks are at best interesting to hear a couple times, at worst a lot of clutter that muddles an album’s greatness. On Easy Rider, though, I’m glad to have the alternate takes. The non-album versions of “Oil in My Lamp” and “Tulsa County” are both better than the versions that wound up on the official release. Had these versions gotten in, Easy Rider would have been a far more “country” album—and an excellent one at that!—which would have made the transition into the album’s second half, when Parsons makes his appearance, slightly less jarring. Also included is a great Jackson Browne cover, “Mae Jean Goes to Hollywood,” an instrumental that really shows off White’s virtuosic playing, and the country jam “Way Behind the Sun.” Had any of these tracks made it on instead of the cloying sea shanty “Jack Tarr the Sailor” or the Fifth Dimension-y “Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins” that awkwardly closes the album, Easy Rider might have been regarded as one of the all-time great Byrds albums, if not all-time great country albums.
A couple related posts: the Rising Storm just did its own Easy Rider post not too long ago, and here's the Easy Rider-era post from the Adios Lounge's exhaustive multi-part look at the career of Clarence White.
In three months, I only downloaded about a dozen new-to-me songs from various corners of the internet—a shockingly low number, but that seems to be the way it's been ever since starting up with eMusic and just generally being busier in my real life. Nevertheless, here are six great songs I've come across in the last few months:
Scratch Acid: Owner's Lament (via eMusic) Technically not new to me, but it's been probably fifteen years since I last heard this album and I'd completely forgotten about this song and how awesome it is—almost entirely due to Rey Washam's drumming.
Gene Clark: Elevator Operator(via Groover's Paradise) It's a little strange that one of the original Byrds would turn out a song that seems like it owes a debt to the Monkees—but then again, so what?
Sonic Youth (with Lydia Lunch): Death Valley 69 (via eMusic) I've got my share of Sonic Youth in my collection, but it's spottier than you might think. So I'm going back to the beginning and moving forward—downloaded this single a month back and also picked up Evol just a couple days ago. This song though... ugly, dirty, pretty rad.
Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca I'm not familiar with any of the Dirty Projectors' other albums, but on the strength of so much positive word of mouth I downloaded Bitte Orca from eMusic without hearing more than a snippet of the opening track. And... it's good! Not the pinnacle of brilliance, but good. As with a band like Grizzly Bear, I can sort of see why some people might regard this album or the band as a high-water mark of contemporary indie—it's certainly an ambitious record—though it ultimately doesn't get me in my gut, sorry. The band has a strong aesthetic—the skeletal songs are propelled more by the vocalizations of David Longstreth and his female co-horts than by the music itself. But as with other acts that have honed their overall sound to such a unique degree, the album itself starts to feel samey after awhile. I had a similar beef with Panda Bear's Person Pitch or Deerhunter's Microcastle; sure, one or two songs here are pretty outstanding, but what am I getting out of the album that I'm not getting out of those songs on their own? Then again I haven't owned the record for very long, and in Bitte Orca's favor I will say that different songs are still revealing themselves to me with each listen.
(A couple of other small peeves: Longstreth's vocals are at times too mannered—which might be why I feel like my good-not-amazing reaction to this album reminds me of how I felt about Shearwater's Rook last year; second, the sequencing of the album is a little jarring, as Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian take lead vocals for a few songs in the middle before returning the reins to Longstreth. Not major complaints, but these things to prick me a little when I put the record on.)
Tortoise, It's All Around You Wait—this isn't the Tortoise album everyone is talking about! I know. I haven't got that one yet. Meanwhile, I did add their last album to my collection partly in anticipation of the new one. Like I mentioned in my Tortoise post a little while back, I skipped this one when it came out five years ago. My verdict today? It's good, it's fine, it's nice. I don't really hear anything here that justifies some critics' complaints that Tortoise lost the plot, though at the same time it's not as adventurous as their first two or three albums. As someone who likes having a stockpile of instrumental jams I can put on while I'm writing or editing, this is a worthy addition to my collection.
Fennesz, Endless Summer Likewise, so is Endless Summer, which I like about the same as It's All Around You. As an album it hangs together well and is a nice listening experience. I've never listened to Fennesz before, though have always been meaning to ever since hearing a lot of buzz around Venice and this album. I was expecting something a little more groundbreaking that what I found, but that doesn't mean I don't like it.
Echo & the Bunnymen, Songs to Learn and Sing Like the Morrissey album I talked about yesterday—actually acquired on the same day—Echo & the Bunnymen are just one of those bands I never spent much time with. Really the whole Brit Pop universe is something I've never had more than a casual relationship with. When these guys were at their height of popularity I was listening to metal. When I got into grunge and alternative and decided to get into older stuff I went to older American punk and indie. So I'm playing catch-up. This is a great collection of songs, no question. In the horse race that is all of my new acquisitions competing for my attention, I can't say Echo won a whole lot, but I do like everything here.
Grateful Dead, Workingman's Dead Some of these acquisitions, like the Morrissey and the Echo & the Bunnymen, were piked up at the Beverly Hills library. Whenever I find myself there I always rifle through the selection and simply pick up any blindspots I've never heard or owned before, often regardless of exactly where my head is at. So it was with Workingman's Dead. I had a pretty heavy phase of 60s/70s country-influenced rock in the last few years and this disc follows on that taste trend. And while I do like this more than American Beauty—the only other Dead album I've heard—I just can't say this is the kind of music I've been craving lately. Like the Echo record, I'm just glad to have it in my collection.
Peter Bjorn & John, Living Thing Sadly, the more records Peter Bjorn & John put out--last year's instrumental Seaside Rock, Peter Moren's solo album, and now Living Thing—the more Writer's Block seems to have been a fluke. Peter Bjorn & John have willfully avoided replicating the guitar pop sound of that excellent record, for better or (more accurately) for worse; perhaps if they did they might regain some of that magic. In the meantime, we're stuck with Living Thing, the trio's attempt, I guess, at a dance record. Guitars, bass, and live drums are not altogether absent but they have been pushed back in the mix in favor of programmed beats and synthesizers. A handful of the resulting tracks—"Lay It Down," "Stay This Way," "Nothing to Worry About"—are fun, but overall the twelve songs here are boring and repetitive. Living Thing lacks the depth that made Writer's Block so wonderful, so surprisingly rewarding beyond the hook of "Young Folks." There's comparatively little variation on this album; just simple beats, bloodless music, and mostly uninspired melodies. Both Peter and Bjorn, who share lead vocals, have somewhat lazy deliveries. Writer's Block's music somehow serviced Peter's sandy, laid-back drawl and Bjorn's laconic monotone perfectly. Here the cold music is dragged even further down by their mostly unenthusiastic vocals. Save a couple of bright spots (though nothing as bright as Writer's Block's best bits), Living Thing mostly disappoints.
Scott Walker: Scott 2 and Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel After seeing the documentary30th Century Man a few months back, my brilliant wife and I were both hankering to get a proper Scott Walker album or two, no longer content with the six or seven miscellaneous downloads we've accumulated over the years. These two were used at Amoeba, so these two we brought home. Both are pretty much outstanding. Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel might have the edge, since Scott 2's three best tracks also appear on this compilation. Like the Byrds and Dylan, Brel's songs somehow bring out the best in Walker. Songs like "Mathilde" and "Jackie" bristle with energy and drama, while "Next" is just gloriously ugly in its description of a young soldier losing his virginity in a whorehouse. Scott 2, meanwhile, has a slightly less bustling vibe when Walker isn't channeling Brel ("Jackie," "Next," and "The Girls and the Dogs" are the three overlapping tracks). But it does include the stellar "Black Sheep Boy"—not an Okkervil River original, I was surprised to learn (official credit goes to Tim Hardin). And while at times Walker can come off on Scott 2 like a syrupy crooner, his songs draped in orchestration, a quick scan of the lyrics demolishes that interpretation. Even before his late-career experimentation, Walker was clearly operating on a different level—I swear on the wet head of my first case of gonorrhea!
Akron/Family, Set 'em Wild, Set 'em Free I flip back and forth between whether I want to include this album on the "best" or the "rest" side of the line. Set 'em Wild is a cohesive, well-composed, well-executed album. It's got great melodies, dynamic highs and lows, and its share of curveballs. I like it! If you told me it was one of your favorite albums of the year, I'd believe you! That said, it is missing that special something, for me, that takes it to that classic-of-the-year level. It's really good, but I'm not doing somersaults for it. Most of the record flips back and forth between songs that seem to throw in all but the kitchen sink—opener "Everyone is Guilty" or the massive "Gravelly Mountains of the Moon"—or really simple tunes like the title track or the They Might Be Giants-ish "River." I like the simple tunes more, though; there tends to be one ingredient in the stew of the headier songs that tastes funny to me—the jam-band feel of "Guilty," the cliche "Auld Lang Syne" outro of "Sun Will Shine." But at the same time I recognize the album would suffer if it were all kept simple. The quiet songs are all the better as an antidote to the woolier moments.
Whereas I give Set 'em Wild an A for effort and a B, B+ for overall quality, my brilliant wife us less forgiving. She finds the band wearing two too many hats—jacks of all trades, masters of none. It's true that nothing here excels to that song-of-the-year, jam-of-the-season level. There's a certain level of mastery that Akron/Family falls just short of hitting. Almost, but not quite. Still, it's a solid, quality record that I haven't grown weary of. As I continue to return to it, I could see myself a few months down the line recanting on some of what I've said here. Time will tell.
Morrissey, Bona Drag I know! I know! For whatever it's worth I feel like I've had this album forever, as I knew almost every song here before finally adding a little Morrissey to my collection. What can I say? I've always had the slightest aversion to the guy. He always seems so self-satisfied. And so many Morrissey fans give off the sense of being privy to some special joke that apparently is going over the rest of our heads. But in the last few years I've finally come around on the guy and his songs, both with and without the Smiths. I still think his songs can get a little samey after a time, but when he hits just the the right lyric and just the right melody, it's pretty inarguable.
Mates of State, Re-arrange Us I don't have a lot to add to my post from a couple weeks back. There's a fine line separating an average Mates of State song from an outstanding Mates of State song, and Re-arrange Us certainly walks back and forth across that line, but there are enough fun ones here--the ratio is about the same as on Bring It Back—that I keep getting drawn back to this record.
Brightblack Morning Light: s/t All credit goes to my brilliant wife for bringing this one into the house. In fact it might have come into the house well before the period this post is supposed to cover, but I stubbornly didn't pay it any mind. (I tried getting into these guys back when this album originally came out and quickly stamped them overrated.) Then we took a trip to Palm Springs and on the way home—a night drive, no less—my brilliant wife put this album on. Dangers of listening to Brightblack Morning Light while driving at night aside, I was finally pulled into their aesthetic. And you do need to be on board with it to enjoy them: every song is a long, slow, almost tortuously hypnotic blues jam with harmonizing vocals wafting over the top. Over the course of one album the sound goes from being pretty cool to seriously monotonous to nearly brilliant. It's like the slow-core equivalent to David Letterman's "Oprah/Uma" joke. I actually bought their second album at the same time as this one but I've barely put it on. Two albums at once seems like overkill, so I'm soaking in this one until I get pruny; eventually I'll move on to the other.
I watched two documentaries over the weekend: Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World, about the wonders of Antarctica and the people who choose to go there, and the Scott Walker documentary 30 Century Man. In a weird way they were perfect complements to each other. Throughout his film, Herzog is most interested in what kind of people wind up at the bottom of the world; none of his subjects could really answer him with any clarity, but more than one noted that arriving to Antarctia, they finally met an entire group of people who were "like them." These were all people who seemed destined to make their home in the most extreme place on Earth.
Over the ninety minutes of interviews and clips taking you across Walker's nearly fifty-year career, you sort of get that same feeling from him. It's impossible to get him to explain how he arrived at the music he makes now--a far cry from his days as a pop star in 1965 England. It truly seems as mysterious to him as to anyone else who might hear his music. Yet the trajectory from his early days with the Walker Brothers to his more avant-garde output of the last ten or fifteen years seems positively natural when laid out as the filmmakers did. I wasn't really familiar with Walker's material past Scott 4, so to watch this film illuminate his work in the 70s (though it does glide right past a number of albums from that decade which Walker stubbornly keeps out of print), 80s (yikes), and 90s-00s (out there), is absolutely fascinating. I can't say I'm running out the door to pick up his more recent material--it strikes me as being terribly interesting but not exactly pleasant to listen to--but seeing him get from point A to Z is engrossing. I recommend the documentary if it screens in your town or comes out on DVD. In the meantime, here's a sort of cliff's notes.
The Walker Brothers: Make It Easy On Yourself (from Take It Easy with the Walker Brothers, 1965)
The Walker Brothers: The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Any More (1966)
I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.
—Slaughterhouse Five
I've been reading Ric Menck's book on The Notorious Byrd Brothers over the last couple of days and it's got me listening to this album again (still?). Though the book isn't heavy on critical insight—it does have some nice biographical nuggets—it's still making me listen more closely to the record. I'm definitely hearing things I hadn't before: it seems a little silly, but I really hadn't thought about how a string quartet abruptly falls into the middle of the otherwise country tune "Old John Robertson." What the fuck is going on there? It's also making realize just how much Gary Usher, the album's producer, loves the phase effect. It's all over Roger McGuinn's vocals on a few songs, it's on the guitars in some places, and it's on the strings and horns that color many of the tracks.
Most of all, though, my renewed listening has made me hear "Change is Now" in a new light. Encapsulated in this one song, I feel like I'm experiencing the Byrds the way the Tralfamadorians saw time in Slaughterhouse Five—all at once, horizontally. Let me explain.
For the last few years I've been picking up all the Byrds albums in chronological order; thus I've experienced their sonic evolution the way it happened. First there was the Dylan-inspired era, firmly rooted in folk song structures, with Roger McGuinn's trademark twelve-string Rickenbacker and the harmonious combination of McGuinn, Gene Clark, and David Crosby's voices. Think "Mr. Tamborine Man" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" Then they moved into the darker, more psychedelic territory of their third album, Fifth Dimension. Crosby began to flex some songwriting muscle, the Dylan covers were tossed aside, and the result was more interesting song structures and McGuinn's flowering as a truly mesmerizing guitarist—look no further than "Eight Miles High" or his work on "What's Happening."
Okay, now skip ahead of Notorious Byrd Brothers, to their next album, the all-out country Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The twelve-string is more or less gone, replaced by lapsteel, and the harmonizing vocals are absent anytime new member Gram Parsons pipes up.
Now listen to "Change is Now." This song encapsulates every era of the Byrds, past, present, and future. It begins with the Woodstock singalong sentiment "Change is now," chanted over McGuinn's Rickenbacker; then it moves into the lapsteel-driven chorus—the most overtly country thing the band had done up to that point—before segueing into a string-bending time-warp of a guitar solo, McGuinn and guest Clarence White simultaneously oozing out long, droning notes over Michael Clark and Chris Hillman's plodding rhythm. Recorded in 1967, the song sums up the Byrds 1965–68 in just over three minutes. Every era of the band laid out to experience at once.
A Caveat: I'm ignoring the post-Sweetheart era because I haven't heard much of it beyond Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde.
A Shout-out: speaking of Clarence White, I hope you're checking in with the Adios Lounge, where LD has been writing the most ambitious series of blog posts over the last few months. It's a multi-part bio of White complete with copious mp3s, youtube clips, and interviews. Essential reading.
A Request: Do any of you, my fellow Byrd Brothers, have a copy of "Lady Friend" you'd be willing to ysi me? This apparently came as a bonus track on the Younger Than Yesterday reissue, which is not the version of that album I own. Menck talks about this song a bit in the book and it's the only song he refers to that I've not heard. It's killing me!
Okay, so the requisite best 08 release list is behind us, as well as a rundown of some of my favorite discoveries of the year, plus my post on my most beloved record, personally, this year. Still, none are totally accurate. Lost in the cracks are the more recent albums that don't really fit into either category. In this year's case, that means adding three albums from 2007 that I didn't get to until 2008. Here's my list of my personal favorite albums of the year. (Again, the logic of the ranking gets a little fluid around number six or so.) Links go to any long-form posts I might have written about the albums in the last year.
In 2007 my blind spot interests were fairly monogamous: my love of the Byrds morphed into a fascination with the Laurel Canyon scene, opening basically into a lot of 60s and 70s folk and rock. (Also, Elvis Costello.) That interest continued in 2008, though moving into a more country-rock direction—the Lovin' Spoonful's Anthology, for instance, was on of my favorite records of the year. I didn't listen to it a lot on its own, but nearly every track made its way into one iTunes playlist or another. I need to start picking up their proper full lengths.
Unlike last year, however, my interests diverged in a few directions in 2008. I started moving toward more experimental and/or less pop music: I resparked my interest in krautrock, finallybegan dipping my toes into contemporary composers, and enjoyed one or two more psychedelic albums. Toward the end of the year, mostly inspired by Michael Azerrad's book Our Band Could Be Your Life, I also filled in a few blanks from punk and early indie bands. (Also, Elvis Costello.)
I didn't have any major obsession-sparking experiences with my purchases this year, the way I did with Big Star's #1 Record and Elvis's Imperial Bedroom. Still, there were pleny of great finds. I finally filled in the gaping blind spot that was Brian Eno. Another Green World was partly what I expected and partly a total surprise--highlighting, if nothing else, how clueless I actually was about why Eno is so great. I knew he was an ambient pioneer, but I sorely underestimated him as a pop auteur. This was reinforced when I picked up Before and After Science, which sounds like a proto-Talking Heads record.
My understanding of krautrock, previously defined mostly by Can, one or two Neu! songs, and the vague "motorik" sense of the word as it applies to bands of the last decade, also came in for reconsideration. Neu!'s warm but desolate electronics, Amon Duul II's ramshod improv, and—best of all—Faust's brilliant deconstruction of rock have me eager to find more, to really get deeper inside this genre.
Part of that journey through krautrock led me to the Monks, who really aren't remotely kraut; they're garage, or proto-punk. Black Monk Time easily ranks as one of my favorite purchases of the year.
One of my prized acquisitions of the year the United States of America's sole album, from 1968—an early example of rock incorporating electronica elements such as tape splicing and other studio-as-instrument techniques. Absolutely worth seeking out.
It wasn't all experimental shit for me in 08, though. Les Paul & Mary Ford's Best of the Capitol Masters has fully ingratiated itself into numerous playlists in my iTunes. I have a soft spot for music from the 40s and 50s that evokes a real sense of G-rated optimism; Les Paul & Mary Ford fit right in alongside my Doris Day and Fred Astaire albums.
I also continued to fill in holes for artists I've been developing a listening relationship with over the last couple of years: two albums each by Elvis Costello (Armed Forces and Get Happy!!), Neil Young (Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and Rust Never Sleeps), and David Bowie. The Bowies I picked up weren't too hot (the dreadful Young Americans and the good but not mindblowing Station to Station), but Costello and Young both were predictably terrific. 2009 will likely see more purchases of albums by all three of these guys, including albums that I know are among their best but which I've still never heard.
At the tail end of the year I went headlong into a punk and classic indie rock spell, picking up a bunch of never-heards by the Minutemen, Mission of Burma, and Buzzcocks along with a bunch of re-buys, returning to albums I sold many years ago on some destitute afternoon trying to pay rent and eat a burrito while I was in college. Mission of Burma is great—I've got Vs. on hold for a future eMusic purchase. And the Buzzcocks—one of those bands, like the Lovin' Spoonful, who I realize I've heard many times over the course of my life but never understood "this is the Buzzcocks." I was expecting something a little more snarly, a little more Sex Pistolsy, but I was pleased to find an album full of pop songs about love (okay, and also orgasms).
Later today, my real favorite album of the year. Tomorrow, my official "top ten new-to-me albums discovered in 2008"—which will somehow manage to include still more albums I haven't even touched on this week so far.
I'd never heard of the Monks until earlier this year, when I came across their song "Monk Time." The track is immediately visceral, as singer Gary Burger shouts "You know we don't like the army. What army? Who cares what army? Why do you kill all those kids over there in Vietnam? Mad Viet Cong. My brother died in Vietnam! James Bond, who was he?" It's part stream-of-conscious spew, part protest, part undirected rage. When the rest of the band attempts to chime in with a discordant volume swell, Burger says to them "Stop it! Stop it! I don't like it!"—as if he truly were a man on the edge of cracking; even his own band might break him. The song stinks of paranoia and distrust.
That feeling permeates all of Black Monk Time, the Monks' 1966 debut, for which "Monk Time" is the opener. Unlike so many other U.S. bands of the era, protesting the war and the administration from Laurel Canyon, Greenwhich Village, or Haight Ashbury, the Monks weren't hippies: they were vets. The band came together while they were were GIs stationed in Germany. Many of the songs on the album are full of barely articulated rage and conflicted interests ("Do you know why I hate you baby? Because you make me hate you, baby! But call me.") Most songs are made up of a single verse at most, if not just a few words, yet you can feel the swirl of conflicted thoughts running through them. "Complications," in all its brevity, points to the band's unique perspective on the country's protests of U.S. military action:
People cry, People die for you. People kill, People will for you. People run, Ain't it fun for you. People go To their deaths for you. Complications!
The song seems to be pointed directly at the hippies, despite the Monks' "dislike" of the Vietnam War itself. None of the songs on Black Monk Time arrive at any kind of clear statement, but in a way that makes them feel more genuine than, say, Joan Baez or the Byrds righteously tolling the chimes of freedom. Complications!
The second time I heard about the Monks was about a month ago, in a thread on ILM about the origins of krautrock. Apparently the Monks factor into the birth of that genre. On paper, it seems plausible: nearly the full extent of the Monks' success in their day was in Germany, the only country in the world where Black Monk Time was released at the time. The band toured all over that country, and in a German documentary about the band, called Transatlantic Feedback, Faust's Hans Joachim Irmler apparently describes seeing the band at a local club, where he had a musical epiphany—maybe it's no accident that the cover of Faust So Far is so similar to Black Monk Time. (I haven't seen the documentary—anyone know where I can find it? I heard about Irmler's comment from yet another thread at ILM.) Julian Cope's book Krautrocksampler makes a similar claim, I'm told. (Ditto the book—I can't find a copy.) On record, though, I'm not hearing it. The Monks clearly come from garage rock roots, and certainly are part of punk's foundation. If someone can better elucidate the kraut connection, please shine a light!
God, looking down my recent posts list, it's a little sad. Six weeks nothing but those soundtrack posts. And August came and went without a My Listening Hours post, which back in July I said would start coming monthly instead of quarterly. Well, I'm rethinking that. I'm rethinking a lot of things. I think I'm spreading myself too thin, with the many blogs thing (not ready to kill anything yet, though). Related, I think I've fooled myself into thinking only a certain kind of post belongs on pgwp. Well, that's all gonna change, I think. Though the last thing you should ever believe is a blogger making promises. Something between the gargantuan multi-part posts here and the no-thought-required posts at I&A will start happening in these parts, soon. This week maybe. Meantime, here are some of my favorite downloads of the last 30 days. Just press play on the media player below and let the mix run while you go about your important business and/or time-wasting.
Jose Gonzalez, How Low Here's yet another album from last year I sorely need to get. I've downloaded probably half of it as I've come across mp3s in the last ten months or so, and it's all excellent. Hearing this one, though, I've finally kicked In Our Nature to the top of my priority list.
Benji Hughes, Waiting for an Invitation Hughes owes a lot to Beck for his slacker delivery and indie rock/mainstream pop–straddling sound. I've heard a few songs from his double-album debut and most of them are good but not essential. I do like this one a lot though, as well as the first song I heard by him (don't even know the title!).
The Eloise Trio, Island Woman My brilliant wife brought this into our collection when she went on a calypso spree right before our trip to Hawaii. I don't know much about the Eloise Trio but every track we have is as good as this one.
Fugiya & Miyagi, Knickerbocker I'll say this first: I love this song. I can't stop singing it to myself. I'm definitely interested in hearing Lightbulbs when it comes out (or did it come out already?). But—I don't know how I'll feel about hearing a full length by F&M. They need to be more than krautrock impersonators.
Hearts & Flowers, Try for the Sun I made a gargantuan iTunes playlist—nearly 800 songs—modestly called the "Awesome Mix"; it's all five-star songs that are hopelessly fun and impossible not to sing along with and enjoy. It's perfect. Well, I think it's perfect. My brilliant wife loves about 90% of it, but she complained that I put too many band in there that sound like the Byrds but aren't the Byrds. Tough shit for her: I just added two more tracks to the mix.
Joel Alme, The Seven Islands Finally, a couple more contemporary indie rockers. The Joel Alme track in particular is really sticking with me, though maybe it's just more Hawaiian vacation glow. Assuming there are seven islands making up Hawaii and that's what he's singing with. Don't tell me if I'm wrong.
