Pretty Goes with Pretty

My Listening Hours: Rest of July–September

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. 

• Andrew Bird: Lull

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)
• Gene Clark: Keep On Pushin' (from Echoes)

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.

• Engineers: Clean Coloured Wire

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.

• Joel Alme: In Your Arms

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. 

• Ida Maria: Oh My God

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).

• Wye Oak: Tattoo

Think about a Lullaby

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:

• The Byrds: Mr. Tambourine Man
• Low: Peanut Butter Toast and American Bandstand
• The Lovin' Spoonful: Rain on the Roof
• Andrew Bird: Oh No
• The Kinks: Waterloo Sunset

My Listening Hours: The Best of January–March

Neko Case: Middle Cyclone
I can't think of another record that made a better second impression than Middle Cyclone. on first listen I thought the album was too long, too ballad-heavy, to monotonous. Midway through my second listen a couple days later, my ears hooked into the lyrics of the title track—a sparse number comprised of Neko Case's voice and guitar, accentuated by angelic backing vocals and a tentative music box. Suddenly I was tuned into Middle Cyclone—an album I've quickly realized is the best of Case's career so far.

Much of Middle Cyclone seems to detail fundamentally flawed relationships—lovers who love passionately but without ever hearing each other. "Just because you don't believe it / doesn't mean I didn't mean it," she sings in "The Next Time You Say Forever"; "I'm a man-eater," she says in "People Got a Lot of Nerve"—"but still you're surprised when I eat you." Later a character in another song admits "I'm not the man you think I am." In "The Pharoahs," Case details a sixteen-year-old who falls for and marries a man who "said you like girls in white leather jackets... that was good enough for me." These are songs about men and women hurtling through affairs—the opener is called "This Tornado Loves You," if you need more evidence. Perhaps this is why the album overcomes that initial feeling of being too long and too slow: Middle Cyclone is full of passionate people—blindly, stupidly, violently passionate—caught in quiet moments of lucidity. The line from the title track that first caught my ear distilled this to four lines:

Can't give up acting tough
It's all that I'm made of
Can't scrape together quite enough
To ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love

The song is one of many flawless moments—"Magpie to the Morning," "Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth," and "Prison Girls" are a few others. It's too early in the year to talk best of 2009 (though that hasn't stopped others from claiming same for Animal Collective). At any rate, this is a contender.

• Neko Case: Middle Cyclone

Andrew Bird: Noble Beast
My review of the record probably says it all. In short: I love the record, though not as much as the previous two. Bird is still my favorite musician working today, hands down, though I have burned out a little on the record; I think it's less to do with the album itself and more to do with listening to Bird, period, for the better part of the last two-plus years straight.

• Andrew Bird: Oh No

Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion
Merriweather Post Pavilion and Noble Beast came out on the same day, January 20, and together the two albums have taken up the bulk of my listening concentration. Maybe it was the competition for my time between the two records that resulted in my hot-and-cold relationship to this record, but I started white hot—loved this record—for the first week or two; then the glow wore off in a big way, not to be rekindled until I saw them live. Now I'm right there with most the rest of the bloggers and fanboys out there who think this is the best album of Animal Collective's career.  

• Animal Collective: Bluish

Faust: Faust IV
Is there a better feeling than buying an album by a new-to-you artist and being blown away by it, then buying another album by the same artist and finding it even better? Such was my experience with Faust. I went on about Faust's first two albums last year—Faust So Far, their second album, was particularly terrific. I picked up Faust IV in January, expecting it to be as good as what I'd come to expect, but this album shattered those expectations. From the opening head-expander that is "Krautrock" to the subdued masterpiece "Jennifer" to the So Far-reprising "Picnic On A Frozen River, Deuxieme Tableux." everything about Faust IV is more focused, more muscular, more cohesive than their other albums. Yes, that means it's also a little more accessible, though no less daring. This is a must-own album.

• Faust: Jennifer  

Mission of Burma: Vs.
I summed up my feelings on this record already, so I'll just quote the last line: "Still, it burns me a little each time I hear the records: a little voice inside me nags, 'This record should be old news to you. It should have long been part of your vocabulary. You should have listened to everyone who ever recommended them to you.'"

• Mission of Burma: Trem Two

Josh Ritter: The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
In a way, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter doesn't feel like a new acquisition for me. Back at the end of 2007, when the album was popping up on a number of best-of-the-year lists, I managed to pick up six or seven mp3s—about half the album—without really trying. I liked what I had, either despite or because it was incredibly straightforward—Ritter is a song-crafter in the most traditional sense, content with a good turn of phrase built into a clear melody with a satisfying level of structure and repetition. Really great pop songs, in other words, without the unnecessary clutter of experimentalism or epic scope. Ritter has a sandy voice with a tinge of southern charm, and his songs are colored by strings, horns, or subtle electronics as often as they are stripped of everything but his voice and guitar. The album—easily the best of his ouevre—is pure twenty-first-century Americana; but for all his traditionalism, he's also refreshingly confident. I was satisfied for the last year with what I had, but I'm much more glad to finally have the whole record now. 

• Josh Ritter: Mind's Eye

Del Shannon: Greatest Hits
I feel like I've talked about this before but I can't recall: I have an "awesome" playlist in my iTunes library, which I update every time I do one of these quarterly posts. The playlist currently stands at 910 songs strong, and is made up of anything in my library that is five stars and upbeat and fun and happy and basically any song, regardless of era or genre, that makes me or my brilliant wife go YES when it comes on. In this post-Indie 103 era in Los Angeles, the playlist is more essential than ever as it's pretty much become my radio station. Some artists are almost custom-made for this playlist: Harry Nilsson, for instance. Spoon. The Lovin' Spoonful. When he's joyous, Cat Stevens. The Beatles, duh. Not long ago my brilliant wife picked up Del Shannon's greatest hits for $2.99 and one listen in, we pretty much just shoved the whole record into the Awesome Mix. "Runaway," of course—who doesn't sing along full-tilt when Shannon Wa-wa-wa-wa-wonders why, why-why-why-why-why? But there's so much more: "Little Town Flirt," "Two Kinds of Teardrops," "Hats Off to Larry," "The Swiss Maid"... the list goes on. Probably the funnest record I've picked up all year.

• Del Shannon: Little Town Flirt

Andrew Bird: Noble Beast

Eight albums into his career, it’s probably no surprise that Andrew Bird has settled into his sound. If you’ve heard anything he’s done in the last five or six years, you ought to know what to expect: the whistling and looping violin underlie Bird’s relaxed Midwestern voice as he eases Roget-required word games out of his mouth. Noble Beast has it all. Though not as upbeat as his last, Armchair Apocrypha, nor as focused (or as flawless) as 2005’s The Mysterious Production of Eggs, Noble Beast is still a wonderful album. 

Bird’s albums reward repeated plays. I’ve had the same getting-to-know-you period for three albums running—on the first few listens they feel impossibly long. The first two or three times through Noble Beast, I consistently looked at the track list around the time of “Tenuousness,” expecting to find I was near the end of the record. “Tenuousness” is track five of fourteen. The first time my brilliant wife listened to it, I watched her do the exact same thing on the exact same song.

That feeling went away; I was familiar enough with Bird to know it would. The many melodies clarify themselves; the complicated lyrics, which at first sound like equal parts foreign language, tongue-twister, and textbook jargon, soon become intelligible, even fun. The album comes into focus—though not as focused as Bird’s last two records. Noble Beast is a more relaxed, more inward-looking affair. For better and for worse the album sounds like it was made by a man who has listened to no one but himself for the last few years. This is best illustrated by the second track, “Masterswarm,” one of three six-minute-plus tracks sprinkled across the album. Sandwiched between the breezy opener “Oh No” and the ready-for-its-close-up “Fitz and the Dizzyspells,” each of which recall Armchair Apocrypha’s exuberant first half, “Masterswarm” is a near-linear assemblage of movements—a preamble, a verse, a bridge, a violin interlude, another verse, a whistle solo, an outro. It’s a song you can lose yourself in, but it also drags the first half of the album down to a pace that the effervescent “Fitz” can’t overcome.

Bird fares better with his other epics, the outstanding “Anonanimal” and aching album-closer “Souverian,” each of which similarly glide from movement to movement but feel to be drawn with harder edges. “Anonanimal” is like the whole of Noble Beast writ small: a puzzle-like musical arrangement and a mazelike lyrical compendium of tongue-twisters (e.g., “See a sea anemone / the enemy / see a sea anemone / that’ll be the end of me / that’ll be the end of me”). It meanders musically as much if not more so than “Masterswarm,” but where that song is a patchwork of near-misses, this is a series of bull’s eyes.

“Masterswarm” isn’t the only drag on the record. “Not a Robot, But a Ghost,” placed in the center of the album right between two mini-instrumentals, is probably intended to lift the album out of a string of relaxed acoustic numbers. In fact, it has the reverse effect: I’d rather hear more like “Nomenclature,” “Tenuousness,” and the gorgeous "Privateer," all throwbacks to Mysterious Production-era Bird. Instead we have a track that, like “Simple X” from Armchair Apocrypha, features Bird collaborating with electonica artist Dosh. The beats just don't suit Bird as well as when he is the sole maestro. His songs work best when they center on his complex violin arrangements and language gumbo.

About that language gumbo: Bird's wordplay has long been a part of what makes his songs so enjoyable. The same is true on this album, though the flash and dazzle of his words and their sounds seem to trump meaning more often than before. I don’t really mind that. “Tenuousness” is the song most other reviews have pointed to as the best example of Noble Beast's pleasures—or annoyances, depending on your perspective. The line about “proto-Sanskrit Minoans or porto-centric Lisboans” makes either point. Really the whole album is chock-full of such wordplay. Bird seems equally fascinated by the idea that the sound of a word lends itself toward its definition just as the sequence of certain notes in a melody signify definitive emotions. His songs take on a larger meaning even if you’re unsure of what he’s really saying. Some might find Bird’s acrobatic wordplay pretentious or overwrought, but I find it fascinating, the way he’s able to eke meaning out of invented words or strange combinations of the scientific and mundane. “Nomenclature is washing away,” he sings in one song. It could be the theme of the record. His songs are a maze of language: parsing each line could as easily lead to a dead end as to an epiphany, but most often it is the pleasure of mouthing the words in song that is the thing. If in some songs there is no real meaning, there is an approximation of meaning. It’s the approximation that seems to be the point.

• Andrew Bird: Tenuousness

Letting it Click

Last week I picked up the new Andrew Bird and Animal Collective, two albums I've been looking forward to for a few months now. It's been kind of refreshing to have them both enter my world. In December I was so distracted by looking back on everything I purchased in 2008, and I've also been on an acquiring spree that has me re-buying or re-listening to old albums that have disappeared from my collection in the last ten years. Anyway, for whatever reason I've been listening to a lot of music, both familiar and not, with only a light-to-medium focus. Now these two albums have come along and have basically pushed everything else out; they're consuming all my time (especially, predictably, the Bird).

I probably listened to Noble Beast and Merriweather Post Pavilion three or four times each before they clicked. Until then they were vaguely good collections of sounds and hooks and random flashes of brilliance. But, like many records (especially the good ones), I had to hear them a few times before I could really pick out what I was loving, what made sense. Listening to them was like hearing a foreign language slowly morph into broken English. (Eventually it will be fluid English, though I'm not there yet with either album. Another way to think of it might be that an album needs to click three times, like a combination lock. As of today Animal Collective has clicked once and Andrew Bird has clicked twice; more on Noble Beast next week, I think.)

I've begun walking to work again—about three miles, or a little under one hour, or one album. Walking to work in the morning, especially at this time of year, when the Southern California weather is crisp and the mornings have the slightest bite to them, is my favorite way to consume an album. It's probably no coincidence that Noble Beast clicked for me the morning I took it for a walk to work. Merriweather Post Pavilion clicked on the same day, when I walked home just as the light went away. I'd forgotten just how pleasurable that is: to just walk with a record. Not work out, not drive, not surf the internet or read, not cook, not anything. Just walk. Me, my headphones, neighborhood streets, a cup of coffee. And one album. It's like my own personal communion with my record collection. The experience can't be shared with anyone.

Looking Forward

If we could do a cage match between all of the music released in 2008 and the music released in the first three months of 2009, which side would you put your bets on? Looking at MBV’s list of upcoming releases, there are at least two, maybe three or four or five albums that are contenders for best of the year status. Mind you, I’ve heard none of them—it’s just conjecture based on past pleasures. But what else is the internet for? Here’s a rundown of a handful of albums I’m keeping an ear out for.

Andrew Bird, Noble Beast + Useless Creatures (Jan. 20)
Me, excited for an Andrew Bird album? Shocker, I know. My only fear surrounding this album is that it will render my blog redundant. How many years in a row can I wax rhapsodic about Andrew Bird? Let’s try for three, shall we? By the way, don’t sleep on the limited-edition double-disc version. Usually I’d say an album’s worth of bonus instrumentals is not essential—Spoon’s Get Nice! addition to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga springs to mind as a mildly entertaining but forgettable treat—but Andrew Bird plus a couple guys from Wilco sounds like it could be good. Not to mention all the instrumental tracks coloring the last two Bird albums have been as good as the proper songs.

• Stream the opening track, Oh No

Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion (Jan. 20)
I’m a latecomer to Animal Collective, having found pleasure in the band via Strawberry Jam and working my way backward through their catalog. Of everything I’ve heard, I still find Strawberry Jam their most compelling work, so I look forward to MPP as an outgrowth from that. I haven’t heard a lick of this record yet but it’s definitely the most exciting and unpredictable prospect of everything listed here.

A.C. Newman, Get Guilty (Jan. 20)
On the one hand, pretty much everything Carl Newman has done through the New Pornographers has been golden—yes, including Challengers. On the other, Newman’s other solo album, The Slow Wonder, is good but not great. It’s so close to, but not, the New Pornographers. Like coffee without the caffeine. So I’m intrigued enough for the new record and will probably check it out, though I’m not losing my shit in anticipation.

• A.C. Newman: There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve

Polvo, Cor Crane Secret (Jan. 27)
Volcano Suns, All Night Lotus Party and The Bright Orange Years (Jan. 27)
I’ve had 90s indie rock on the brain for the last couple of months, particularly groups that didn’t seem to make as lasting an impression as one might have predicted back in the day. Polvo and the Volcano Suns both fall into this category, so I’m glad to see these reissues hitting shelves. I feel like there’s a lot of fifteen- or twenty-year-old indie rock just waiting to be rediscovered. Maybe it’s these bands, maybe it’s others, but I do predict a collective revisiting of the 90s canon soon.

• Polvo: Can I Ride
• Volcano Suns: Jak

Beirut, March of the Zapotec (Feb. 17)
Though I liked The Flying Cup Club, arguably even more than Beirut’s debut, I was still left lukewarm on Zach Condon the songwriter. I summarized that feeling in this post. Part of me feels that Zapotec will be a kind of final test for my tolerance of Beirut. He’s gone to Mexico for inspiration this time around! It feels like too much of a shtick. If his overall prowess as a crafter of great songs has improved, then it won’t matter. Good is good. But that remains to be seen.

Neko Case, Middle Cyclone (Mar. 3)
Unlike Carl Newman, Neko Case’s solo material is a world apart from her contributions to the New Pornographers, so I’m considerably more excited for Middle Cyclone than I am for Get Guilty. 2006’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood was an incredibly slow burner for me. Despite buying it when it came out, it wasn’t until earlier this year that the album truly revealed itself to me. I appreciate that Case has grown beyond her Patsy Cline croon into a more mature songwriter. Hopefully she’s continuing on that trajectory (though I wouldn’t mind a few more uptempo numbers this time around).

Midlake, Courage of Others (TBA)
Peter Bjorn & John, TBA (TBA)
Not sure if these will come out by the end of March or not, but they're right up there with Andrew Bird and Animal Collective for most-anticipated album of the year. I spent most of 2007 listening to The Trials of Van Occupanther and Writer's Block. Unlike Bird and Animal Collective, I’m more anxious about this record—that is, less confident that the follow-up will equal or surpass the previous peak. I want these albums to blow my mind (especially the Midlake). Will they?

There's plenty of other albums on MBV's list; what's got you excited?

A More Accurate Best of 08

 
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.

1. Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs (2005)

• Andrew Bird: Sovay

2. Okkervil River, The Stage Names (2007)

• Okkervil River: The Plus Ones

3. Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam (2007)

• Animal Collective: For Reverand Green

4. Brian Eno, Another Green World (1975)

• Brian Eno: The Big Ship

5. Fleet Foxes, s/t (2008)
See also my original review.

6. Fiery Furnaces, Widow City (2007)

• Fiery Furnaces: The Philadelphia Grand Jury

7. Monks, Black Monk Time (1966)
See also this post featuring five videos from a Monks performance in '68.

8. The Lovin' Spoonful, Anthology (1965-69)

• The Lovin' Spoonful: Nashville Cats

9. The Ruby Suns, Sea Lion (2008)

• The Ruby Suns: There Are Birds

10. Vampire Weekend, s/t (2008)
See also this post, in which I lament the missed opportunity for New England synergy in pop culture.

11. Little Joy, s/t (2008)

12. United States of America, s/t (1968)

• The United States of America: I Won't Leave My Wooden Wife for You, Sugar

My Actual Favorite Record of the Year

I knew when I discovered Armchair Apocrypha last year that I’d found something special in Andrew Bird. This was an artist I wanted to savor. So I let my obsession with that album play out before I sought out another one of his records. It took about a year. By March of this year I felt I was ready to dive into another: Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs, from 2005. Like Armchair, it went on to become my most listened-to album of the year. Not only that, I was astonished to find a Bird album that was better than Armchair. Eggs is a masterpiece.

It’s a more melancholy album than Armchair. Although it has its moments of humor, it rarely gets as upbeat as the first half of that album. That turned out to be just fine for me: 2008 turned out to be melancholy year, to understate.

Part of why Eggs became so important to me, besides its more tangible qualities—great songs, stellar musicianship, etc.—is that it happened to enter my life just when I needed it to. I owned it for maybe one or two weeks before I was called to my childhood home to be with my dad for the last few weeks of his life. It was an ordeal, to say the least. a time of communal grief shared with aunts, uncles, sister, brother, wife, stepmother, mixed with a kind of simultaneous loneliness and introversion that can’t be articulated. Music, as with any other event in life, is there to be one’s psychological wallpaper. I’ve written about that already, the music I went to before, during, and after.

Eggs held a unique place at that time because it was mine. It wasn’t an album my entire family could find comfort in, like Graceland; it wasn’t identifiably my dad’s, like the O Brother soundtrack or Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms. It wasn’t even an album to be shared with my wife, despite the amount of time we’d later spend listening to Eggs for the rest of the year. At that point, only I knew the record. I would eject myself from the house occasionally, off on a walk through my old neighborhood, sometimes venturing further from home than I’d intended. It was me, my headphones, and Andrew Bird. Because of Armchair, Eggs was familiar enough to embrace—to be embraced by—without reservation, yet strange enough that it gave my mind something to focus on. I had a conversation with Eggs for two or three weeks straight. We still talk sometimes.

Bird’s lyrics can be like a game, as you listen to how the sounds of the words melt into each other. “You took my hand and led me down to watch a papillon parade / and we let the kittens lick our hair and drink our chalky lemonade”—the words beg to be mouthed. The more familiar the songs become, the more meaning reveals itself—Bird is a wordsmith, not a gibberish peddler. In those early, difficult weeks of listening to the album, those meanings had yet to come through to me. Stray lines from each song wafted through my head, crystallizing into something that, combined with the wistful tone of so many of the songs, felt custom designed to my situation. “I was getting ready to be a threat,” Bird sings in the opening track, “Sovay”—as if to say that something had been cut short. The next song begins with a question posed to a panel of experts: “'Why are we alive?' / Here was their reply: / 'You’re what happens when two substances collide / When by all accounts you really should have died.'” That existential wonder manifests again in the gorgeous “Masterfade” as a child gazes into the sky “full of zeros and ones” before “you took my hand and said I shouldn’t be afraid.” The next song, “Opposite Day,” cries over and over, “Today was supposed to be just another day”—a cry I repeated to myself, attaching my own moribund meaning, over and over. Throughout the album there was a lyric or musical motif (“Sovay,” “Measuring Cups,” “The Naming of Things”) that seemed to comfort or commiserate.

Of course, the album in fact was not that literal. If anything it is an album about adolescence, not death. For a son watching is father die over a period of a few weeks, an album about adolescence presses the emotional buttons better than anything else. At any rate Eggs is not that sad of a record. It’s certainly not a stereotypical wallowing record. And that’s just it: Eggs helped me not wallow (not too deeply, at least). As melancholy as it could be in some places, it was also quite optimistic in others, if not downright humorous. That might be why it has managed to become more than just the soundtrack to one of my life’s lowest points. My personal story aside, it is an undeniably outstanding album, perfect from beginning to end. In Pitchfork parlance, this is a 10.0.

As I’ve been saying in a few posts here and there, I think 2008 turned out to be noteworthy for a lot of albums—sure, they’re good—that sit pretty comfortably inside larger trends of the last few years. I’m thankful for Andrew Bird, whether last year, 2005, this year, or next (Noble Beast comes out in a matter of weeks), because he is truly an individual voice in music right now. His strengths—lyricism, composition, musicianship, whistling!—are singularly his own. He’s got at least two stellar records to his name already (I’ll let you know when I get to the rest), and likely one more to come in less than a month. Happily, almost a year since I bought Eggs. I think I’m ready for it.

• Andrew Bird, Masterfade

 

My Listening Hours: The Best of April–June

Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs
Just looking at Saturday's post you can probably guess that this is my favorite purchase of the season (not to mention favorite of the year). I've written about this album's effect on me already, so I'll just add that, happily, I think it is so good that it will probably rise above any sort of personal connection to this period of my life. I hope so, at least. Meanwhile, I read Bird's posts at Measure for Measure with great anticipation for his new album, whenever it may be finished.

• Andrew Bird, Masterfade

Neil Young, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
Five years ago I had zero Neil Young albums in my collection; now I have five. Harvest is still my favorite—I just love the mood of that album—but this one is a strong contender for the top spot, as Young gets a lot louder and a lot jammier. Epics like "Cowgirl in the Sand" and "Down by the River" are mindblowing, while the shorter songs like "Round and Round" and the title track have undeniable hooks. This album is outstanding from start to finish.

• Neil Young, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

The Lovin' Spoonful, Anthology
The Lovin' Spoonful are one of those bands I didn't know I'd been listening to for pretty much my whole life. I never connected the band to their many, many hits ("Do You Believe in Magic," "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind," "Summer in the City," and a few others), so it wasn't the obvious songs that finally drew me to them. It was Paul's post at Setting the Woods on Fire on the roots of country-rock, which included "Nashville Cats." I fell in love! A few weeks later I was at the library and saw this greatest hits collection, at which point I realized just how many of their songs I already knew. The collection bounces around between their British Invasion-inspired tunes and their more explicit forays into country. It's the latter songs I respond to the most.

There are a handful of songwriters or bands that fall into a special category for me—i.e., songs my imaginary toddlers will love. I'd say at least half of this collection, if not the whole darned thing, fits in nicely. (Also in this category: Harry Nilsson, a lot of Cat Stevens and Simon & Garfunkel, a few bossa nova tracks and country songs, and probably a bunch others... perhaps a post for another time.)

• The Lovin' Spoonful, Jug Band Music

Les Paul & Mary Ford: Best of the Capitol Masters
Acquired at the library on the same day as the Lovin' Spoonful, I could say a lot of the same things about this wonderful collection, which also fits into my imaginary toddler playlist. Mary Ford's voice (is she overdubbing her own harmonies? I think so) is just so lovely, and I honestly cannot figure out how Les Paul's fingers can dance across the fretboard; his style is absolutely unique and I've never heard anyone after cop his sound.

• Les Paul & Mary Ford, The World is Waiting for the Sunrise

Elvis Costello & the Attractions, Armed Forces
Last year, thanks to Imperial Bedroom, I went from liking Elvis Costello to flat-out loving him. So I've begun filling in the holes in my collection, trying to move chronologically through his ouerve at least until I get to the spotty part of his career. Which brings me to his third album, Armed Forces. I can see the progression between the first two albums, which were buoyed at least in part by a lot of sheer attitude, and Imperial Bedroom, which is wall-to-wall perfectly executed pop songwriting. The songwriting on the first half of Armed Forces is pretty much right up there with Imperial Bedroom: "Accidents Will Happen," "Senior Service," and "Oliver's Army" are all fantastic. Somewhere around the middle things falter a little; I'm not too fond of "Goon Squad," and everything after that falls a little flat for me. Not bad by any means, just not to the highest caliber Costello is capable of. (And for the record, while I like "What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding," it's never been one of my favorites.)

• Elvis Costello: Oliver's Army

Philip Glass, Glassworks
I've been flirting with contemporary composers for years now, in a very shallow way: bought Koyaanisqatsi some time in college, picked up Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians five or six years ago, bought a box set of early electronica forbears (which includes the likes of Cage, Young, Stockhausen, and others), and then a few months ago got Terry Riley's In C for a whole dollar. So I don't profess to have anything more than a passing knowledge of the genre, as evidenced by my just now getting Glassworks, which is probably a (rightly) obvious place to start. It's really a fantastic collection of pieces, mostly for piano. Unlike the other material I already own, which is either hour-long works asking you to immerse yourself and listen or brief, literally experimental exercises, Glassworks is short and easily digestible. That's not the best endorsement, but what I mean is that it really does feel like a kind of gateway drug, moreso than the other discs I've tried (and liked) in the past. So, a question for those of you more schooled than I: where to next? Other works by these composers? Other composers altogether? Who are some of your favorites?

• Philip Glass, Opening

Shearwater, Rook
The lone 2008 release to make it into my favorites this time around. And at first I really didn't think it would. Rook requires some patience, to say the least. In terms of songwriting, performance, and production, it is pretty much flawless. It feels epic, and composed, despite running under forty minutes altogether—which in itself is an accomplishment, in an age new releases that include "bonus tracks" on already overlong albums (off the top of my head: Fiery Furnaces, TV on the Radio).

So why did I hesitate, at first, in liking Rook? The voice. Jonathan Meiburg, who is the singer, songwriter, and overall creative force behind Shearwater, has a very pretty, obviously trained vocal delivery. His timbre, tone, and projection are all very practiced, sometimes a little mannered and often careening into the dramatique. At one point during "Home Life" I halfway expect Meiburg to don a little white mask and sing about the music of the night. It's a little offputting at first, in other words. But! Every other element of Rook is outstanding, so you sort of keep going back to it despite the oily bits that make you cringe a little. And after a few more listens Meiburg's vocals stick out less and less, until finally everything clicks. (It took me probably five listens before I realized that the vast majority of my least favorite vocal parts were all in one song—again, "Home Life.") In the end, Rook really works, and it's becoming one of my favorite releases of the year so far (though, I admit, the playing field is not that crowded at the moment--more on that later this week). It's also worth emphasizing that Rook works best as an album; tweezing a single track out from the pack doesn't exactly get across how fluidly the songs work together. The sum is most certainly greater than its parts. Nevertheless:

• Shearwater, Rooks

The United States of America, s/t
I've long been on the hunt for this album, ever since hearing reference to them in regards to Broadcast many years back. In fact it seems like I only hear about the United States of America when they're being namechecked in a Broadcast review—which is kind of a shame because this record is a lot more varied than those mentions would let on. Only the (excellent) first song, "The American Metaphysical Circus," sounds like a precursor to Broadcast. The rest is a simply outstanding psychedelic album full of cacophonous overlapping sounds, otherworldly production, and not a little sense of humor, as on "I Won't Leave My Wooden Wife For You, Sugar." This record is way, way ahead of its time.

• The United States of America, The American Metaphysical Circus
• The United States of America, I Won't Leave My Wooden Wife for You, Sugar

Tomorrow, the rest (and the worst).

The 12 Stages of Grief Mixtape

[Brief disclaimer: This is, I think, the last post of this nature. I promise more lighthearted fare next week...]

I was back home taking care of my dad, then dealing with the funeral and otherwise putting things in order, for about three weeks total. (It felt like three months.) When I returned to work last week, greeted by flowers and cards and kindness from my many co-workers, one of them—who has no idea I'm a nerd for music or that I have this blog or used to be in a band or used to run a performance space—offered to make me a mix of cathartic music. She claimed that certain aggressive songs helped her get through similar times. I told her thanks but no thanks: I was in the country music phase of my 12 Stages of Grief Mixtape.

It was just an off-the-cuff joke, but it made me think about my listening habits not just over the last few weeks but the last few months. I've obliquely made mention of it here in the past though hadn't (until earlier this week) come out and said what it was I was dealing with.

I first noticed the way my listening habits were being affected around the beginning of the year. This is the point at which my dad seemed perfectly healthy, though the inevitability of what was going to happen had been made plain by a phalanx of doctors. Because he did not seem outwardly sick, visiting Dad was not a sad experience—we'd go out, barbecue in the back yard, watch sports on TV, do the usual. There was no dwelling on the bad news, no urgent heart-to-heart talks; just laughter and crossword puzzles.

Yet once I returned home, four hours away, 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 enevelop me and keep the world on pause or at a distance. I took long walks with this kind of music droning in my headphones, not really seeing the world outside, simply trusting my body to take me down familiar streets.

• Animal Collective, "For Reverend Green"
• Can, "Father Cannot Yell"
• Leonard Cohen, "Avalanche"
• The Ruby Suns, "Remember"
• Spiritualized, "Shine a Light"

None of these songs fall into the same genre, yet they all have that sort of enveloping feeling. Sonically they somehow embrace you without feeling comforting.

By this time last month, though, I needed comfort. I coincidentally picked up Andrew Bird's Mysterious Production of Eggs just a few days prior to the call from home, asking me to come up. I listened to the album on the drive up more or less for the first time, easing into it the same way I did Armchair Apocrypha—that is, it felt inviting at first but exhausting by the end. I knew that repeated listens would heal that. Eggs is a slower album; it feels more like Armchair's second half than its first. For my state of mind, I welcomed the lack of faster-paced numbers.

• Andrew Bird, "Sovay"

I've already written about why the album turned out to be just what I needed. Dad was declining rapidly; he was mentally sharp but physically spent when I first arrived, meaning I had a lot heavy lifting to do—getting him from his bed to his wheelchair and vice versa. It was an emotionally draining experience, to say the least, and became harder and harder each day. I continued to take those long walks but this time I needed songs that felt more soothing, warmer.

• Andrew Bird, "Masterfade"

I listened to Eggs and nothing else for at least a week straight. I guess it turned out to be my wallowing record. I'm still listening to it almost daily, though at least now I'm alternating between that and other albums. It helps that I'm back in L.A. again, with my full music collection to choose from and more opportunities to be out, listening.

Thus I unconsciously started mixing country music into my daily consumption. And when my co-worker got me quipping about mixtapes I had a sort of Freudian epiphany—that maybe my listening habits were still being shaped by my dad. He was a huge country fan, mostly bluegrass and 60s-70s style. Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, old-timey stuff.

It's hard for me to get more specific than that, though. Unlike the folky stuff he liked (which I've already written about), Dad's country tastes were exiled to his car stereo. Neither my mom nor his second wife liked it, so he kept it there. I think of his country music tastes as being more personal to him and more mysterious to me. I can't go out and buy the album I know he loved. I just have to guess, and make due with my own meager collection, most of which comes from a fairly brief alt-country phase in the late-90s/early-00s and a spate of downloading over the last few months.

• Jimmie Rodgers, "In the Jailhouse Now"
• Neko Case, "John Saw That Number"
• Gillian Welch, "Winter's Come and Gone"
• Buck Owens, "My Heart Skips a Beat"
• Willie Nelson, "My Own Peculiar Way"

That's okay though. I'm not really listening to this stuff to continue wallowing. For the most part I'm skipping past the aching ballads, opting instead for the upbeat numbers. Those are the kind of tunes Dad liked, I know that much. Right now, me too.

Today Was Supposed to Be an Ordinary Day (This Week's Soundtrack)

Andrew Bird, & the Mysterious Production of Eggs

I bought this album less than two weeks ago. Picked it up at Amoeba along with four other CDs. A week or two before that I went to the library and checked out nearly twenty discs. And somewhere in that time I also downloaded an album's worth of random mp3s and some friends have YSI'd me some albums too. Yet this is the only album I've listened to this week.

This has been an unreasonably difficult week. One of those weeks that comes along and punctures your big picture and renders all your daily complaints and aggravations meaningless. Whatever time I've had to myself (it hasn't been much), I've put on this album. Something about not already knowing it, but knowing Bird, makes it comfortable and alien at once, and I kind of need both right now. Something that isn't so difficult to find a toehold or to understand, but something that doesn't bring its own memories and associations with it.

I haven't really processed all the lyrics yet. Just the melodies, the quality of Bird's soft-spoken voice, the overall mood and tone of the album. Who knows what the fuck the songs are about; that's a mystery to solve some other time. All I know is that the feeling of this record is perfect; melancholy yet soothing, a hint (just a hint) of anger or frustration (or am I just projecting?), coated in lush melodies fit for a relaxing Sunday morning. I feel like I barely know this album, yet it will be something that has meaning for the rest of my life.

Other Voices: Bird, Jarnow, Brownstein

The New York Times has a new blog, Measure for Measure, which lets songwriters talk about their process. Andrew Bird writes about what goes into penning a new song, "Oh No" [via You Ain't No Picasso]:

What is becoming more challenging of late is dealing with so many fully formed melodies that are unwilling to change their shape for any word. So writing lyrics becomes like running multiple code-breaking programs in your head until just the right word with just the right number of syllables, tone of vowel and finally some semblance of meaning all snap into place.

...

The only thing I don’t care for in this lyric is the “calcified charismatist” — it just feels too clever. I’m known to make up words but this is too heavy-handed. So I’m still searching for the right words. For a while it was “unemployed ex-physicists,” but that’s too typical of something I would write. Lately I’m considering “calcified arhythmitist” or just “arithmatist” — something that conveys a physicist’s sketch or formula for what will revive our harmless sociopath.

Jesse Jarnow takes a left turn on the Maxim/Black Crowes flap:

But it's still disappointing that the Crowes bothered to call for an apology at all, especially given their repeated and obvious yearnings for '70s rock culture, when their beloved Creem magazine was stocked with writers like Richard Meltzer who (in his own words) would "throw chicken bones at some annoying singer at the Bitter End, review (harshly) albums I'd obviously never listen to (or concerts I'd never attended), reverse the word sequence of a text to make it read backwards (or delete, for no particular reason, every fourth word)."

It's a testament to the age not that Maxim would be shamed into apologizing for their behavior, but that they were so dreadfully goddamn boring in their fabrication.

Carrie Brownstein at Monitor Mix is the latest to go on about Bon Iver:

from the moment Justin Vernon and his bandmates took the stage, the audience hung on every note, in-between song banter, and a flood of feedback. I am not exaggerating when I say that people cried. Bon Iver's songs are delicate but they are not soft; the comfort in them is fleeting, their beauty uneven. In the live setting the songs are wilder, they screech and veer towards chaos before closing in on themselves. Vernon's voice is part songbird, part howl, and it is fearless.

Personally, I don't get it. The song Brownstein links to sounds like Wolf Parade unplugged, which is sort of an excruciating notion.

My Listening Year: The Best of 2007 (New Release Edition)

1. Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha [mp3: "Fiery Crash"]
Other albums released this year might have been more ambitious, more audacious, more immediate, more dramatic. But the simple fact is this: no other album occupied my time more than this one. It's musically and lyrically sophisticated, not without humor or irony but never self-conscious either. And it's the best kind of album, where every single song, at one point or another, is your favorite.
Previously: my review of the album

2. Peter Bjorn & John, Writer's Block [mp3: "Paris 2004"]
I never got obsessively into Writer's Block the way I did with Armchair Apochrypha, but like a faithful dog, this album has never been far from my iPod. There ain't a single bad song here, and best of all there is a lot that is different from "Young Folks," lest you form your opinion based on that one overplayed track. (I gave you "Paris 2004" here; I love the unexpected timing of the chorus.) I played the hell out of Writer's Block for the first part of the year, and I've consistently returned to it after the honeymoon, still loving each and every track from first to last.

3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga [mp3: "Eddie's Ragga"]
Easily the best-produced album this year. I knew I liked this album for its songs, but once I started listening to it on headphones and started noticing all the little details, it got even better. Radiohead could take a few lessons from Spoon in terms of using the studio as an instrument. As if everything else Spoon does, they know when to use it and when not to use it. "Eddie's Ragga" is a good example: listen to it on headphones and hone in on that guitar. It's basically one chord for the entire song but the sound of the subtly guitar changes throughout.

4. Jens Lekman, Night Falls Over Kortedala [mp3: "Shirin"]
Easily three or four of my favorite songs of the year are courtesy Night Falls Over Kortedala. The album drags a little in the middle—one too many songs with that syrupy layer of strings—but as time goes on even the songs I liked less on first listens have been growing on me. I can tell that I'm not done with this album yet.

5. Radiohead, In Rainbows
Last week I mentioned that after listening to In Rainbows, I stopped abruptly and haven't felt the need to go back. That's still true, but in anticipation of this post I did put it on once more, and darn it but I can't deny that it's a cohesive, well-thought-out, engaging album. My feelings on my personal relationship to Radiohead aside, this is an album with few faults.
Previously: my review of the album; Radiohead teams up with the Eagles to fuck record stores; and of course, "All I Need" rendered as lolcats.

6. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
This album is getting a lot of love right now, showing up at or near the top of many other best-of-the-year lists. For me, seven of this album's nine tracks are fantastic, which is enough to get it on my list; I just wish it didn't totally crap out on the last two.
Previously: my thoughts on "Us v. Them"

7. New Pornographers, Challengers
I got into the New Pornographers late, and hence picked up their other three albums all at once. I wound up processing all those albums as one large body of work. Challengers, therefore, is the first New Pornographers effort I've taken on its own terms. That might be why I appreciated this album's layers more than others did. I'm not sure what I would have thought if the band had done Electric Version 2.0—would I have embraced a dozen more super-charged anthems or would I have felt like they were spinning their wheels? Who knows. The bottom line is that Challengers is different, but not too different. I appreciate that. I've said this before, but: I never would have thought my favorite tracks on a NP album would be the slow songs, but that's what happened. For an album I'd been anticipating all year, Challengers somehow managed to be a pleasant surprise.

8. Feist, The Reminder
Heading into 2007, this was my most-anticipated album. So of course it disappointed a little. And by now I'm all Feisted out for a while, what with the ubiquity of "1234" making discussion of Feist too polarizing to be interesting (come on, just listen to this music—there's nothing polarizing about it; you either love it or you're ambivalent about it). At any rate, The Reminder succeeded for me as a collection of ten or twelve great Feist songs, though it failed as an album. It didn't quite cohere, though most of these songs will continue to pop up on various iTunes playlists, guaranteeing consistent rotation around this house.
Previously: my review of the album; my suggested resequencing of the track list; and my post on "Adult Alternative"

Albums of My Life

Last week I referred to Paul Simon’s Graceland as an “album of my life.” Coincidentally, this thread at Last Plane to Jakarta took a brief tangent into what constitutes a “life-changing album.” Two different concepts, and I’ve had both on my mind in the last few days. The first is a lot easier to find examples of: albums that I played intensely during some period of my life, to the point of becoming something other than good or great albums; rather, they're the soundtrack to memories. The second category, life-changing albums, is harder to figure out. Before I try to sort that one out, I want to think about the other.

Albums of my life. Going back as far as I can, my childhood was filled with Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, Ry Cooder. I have strong mental associations with all those artists, and in retrospect they all must have set some kind of foundation for what I’ve come to like today.

George Michael’s Faith might have been the very first album I ever viewed as wholly mine: an cassette I kept in my own room, played on my own walkman. INXS’s Kick and Run-DMC’s Raising Hell, too. In elementary school I would walk laps around the track during recess with Danny Casares as we tried to piece together the lyrics to “You Be Illin’ from memory. By sixth grade I was transfixed by Appetite for Destruction—probably the first album I’d ever associated with danger. This led to junior high and high school, where Master of Puppets, Rust in Peace, and Persistence of Time set the template for my taste in metal. By my junior or senior year I was transitioning out of metal and into something else: Rollins Band (particularly the early stuff), Tool, and a band I’d discovered through a blind purchase at Tower Records, Craw, all made music that was heavy but was more dynamic musically and more sophisticated lyrically and emotionally.

Somehow from there I stumbled into indie rock without any real guidance (which I’ve written about before). By then I’d lost interest in heaviness but was actively looking for music that shifted dynamically. Slint, Fugazi, Rodan, Codeine. I vividly recall moving to college and trying to describe the kind of music I liked to a kid I’d met in the dorms. “It can be really loud and really screamy, but it can also get really quiet, and it’s not heavy like metal.” He just looked at me and said “what, you mean emo?”

Another dormmate gave me a dubbed cassette full of songs by what I thought was some friend of hers; the recording quality was exceptionally poor and all the label said was “Elliott Smith.” I played the hell out of the tape but was embarrassed to tell the girl I dug it so much because it seemed a little weird to be really into her random friend’s music. Six months later I was in a record store and saw the album in the bin—a real record by a real guy on a real label, and best of all that was another album (Roman Candle) in the bins as well!

The rest of college was Tortoise, June of 44, Blonde Redhead, Unwound, Superchunk, the Pernice Brothers. After college, when I met my wife: My Morning Jacket’s The Tennessee Fire, Cat Power’s Moon Pix, Rufus Wainwright’s first album, Ryan Adams’s Heartbreaker.

We got married in September 2001: she walked down the aisle to Sigur Ros’ “Sven-g-Englar” and we danced to Low’s “Two Step.” We moved to New York not long after. If you asked me to soundtrack the winter of 2002, when we lived in a spacious but empty loft above a functioning sweatshop in a shitty part of Williamsburg, I’d have to hand you Pete Yorn’s Music for the Morning After. When we moved to Boerum Hill it was Chutes too Narrow, Michigan, and Radio Dept.’s Lesser Matters. We bought Feist’s Let it Die in Paris in 2004. We moved to L.A. in 2005 and in the last two or three years it’s been Funeral, Antonio Carlos Jobim & Elis Regina, Midlake, and most recently Andrew Bird.

These are albums of my life. And really I’m just scratching the surface—this is what I can come up with just thinking about it in the time it takes to write these words. Were I to focus on one period of my life, other albums would come into view, sort of like staring at the night sky and seeing the stars reveal themselves the longer you look.

But not all of these albums are my all-time favorites, necessarily. Some I haven’t listened to in years, either because my tastes have changed drastically (everything pre-Spiderland), because I associate them too strongly with my memories (Moon Pix), because they’ve just not aged well (sadly, Spiderland), or because they’re frankly not that good (Music for the Morning After).

Thus we come to the difference between an album of my life and an album that changed my life. More on that later this week.

My Listening Hours: The Best of 2007 So Far

My top ten of the year is, so far, just a top six. But in my book that means 2007 has been a pretty fantastic year for new music. Thus far, only my #1 pick seems unassailable; the remaining albums are all still jockeying for final position; I reccomend them all equally.

I won't bore you with more longwinded posts. Today, just a list, an mp3, and links to things I've said previously. Check back tomorrow for a look at what's still to come before 2007 is over.

1. Andrew Bird, Armchair Apochrypha. [mp3: "Heretics"]
See also my album review, or this post, which includes an mp3 of "Scythian Empires"

2. New Pornographers, Challengers. [mp3: "All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth"]
See also the post from earlier this week, which includes an mp3 of "Challengers"

3. Peter Bjorn & John, Writer's Block. [mp3: "Lets Call it Off"]
See also this post, about accessibility vs. experimentation, which includes an mp3 of "Roll the Credits"

4. Feist, The Reminder. [mp3: "So Sorry"]
See also my album review, my suggested resequencing of the album, and this post on "Adult Alternative," which includes an mp3 of "Brandy Alexander"

5. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. [mp3: "Don't Make Me a Target"]
See also the post from earlier this week, which includes an mp3 of "The Ghost of You Lingers"

6. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver. [mp3: "Us v Them"]
Sorry, I got nothin'.

And you? What's your best of the year so far?

My Listening Hours: The State of 2007 So Far

No, the albums here are not my tops of the year; they're just what I have to choose from. These are the nine albums made in 2007 that I've so far purchased or acquired, and/or completely processed as albums.

If I were pressed to make a top ten list, I'd stall at four. Here's my ranking:

1. Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha
This one leads the pack, easily, as the most rewarding album of the year.

2. Peter Bjorn & John, Writer's Block
This album has remained in my iPod for a surprisingly long time. When I got a little burned on the record as a whole, the songs kept popping up on random plays and I never skipped 'em. Lately I've come back around to playing the record straight through again and I'm reminded of how layered and thought-out the album  is.

3. Feist, The Reminder
For now this occupies the number three spot. By the end of the year there's a good chance it will still be in the top ten, but I don't know how high. I'm just beginning to burn out the record and am ready to put it aside for awhile. The question by the end of the year will be whether it ever makes its way back into my rotation. Sometimes albums have a way of surprising you the second time around and all the nagging feelings you had just evaporate.

4. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
As I said earlier this week, this is an album that I'm only now realizing is better than I first gave it credit for. As with Feist I don't really know how I'll feel about six months from now. I don't really know how I'll feel about it six weeks from now! Sometimes I embrace the record, sometimes I'm exhausted by it.

The rest? None are truly bad but none are essential, either. The Sea & Cake committs the worst sin - it's boring. While the Shins, Arcade Fire, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah all have their strong points but honestly I haven't consciously chosen to put them on since the last time I wrote about them - a good three months ago.

There are a few albums out now that I still intend to pick up--Battles and Rufus Wainwright, in particular. What about you? What's on your best-so-far list? Have I missed anything totally worthwhile? There was a lot of buzz around Panda Bear and the National, among others, in the last few months. Did you pick them up? Have they remained in your rotation? What has occupied your listening hours? Let me know in the comments.

Meanwhile I'll be looking ahead to the next three months of releases for albums I'm looking forward to. Check back here later today.

My Listening Hours: The Best of April–June

Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha
Earlier this year I did a couple of posts concerning my pet peeve about most mp3 blogs. It generated a little discussion and I think brought a lot of new readers here. I still stand by all I said—basically that most mp3 blogs spend too much time hyping, not enough time talking about music—but on the other hand, you've got Andrew Bird's latest album. I absolutely would not have picked up this album if it weren't for the mp3 blogs. Bird has been on my radar for a while but I've just never had the incentive to pick up one of his many records. Then "Heretics" started showing up on every last blog I read and that was the end of it. So, chalk one up for the mp3 bloggers: this is my favorite record of the year by a mile.

I wrote a pretty lengthy review of the album not long after I picked it up (where I too included "Heretics," if you're interested). I won't go on about it again, other than to reiterate that Armchair Apocrypha is the best kind of album: it's a grower. My review went on about that facet but here I am two months later and it is still growing on me. I've declared about eight or nine of the twelve tracks to be my absolute very favoritest in that span of time—curently it's "Scythian Empires."

Feist, The Reminder
Maybe it seems a little funny that I'd chalk this one up as one of my favorites, given my nit-picky review, my suggested re-sequencing, and my malaise concerning the very idea of something called Adult Alternative, but the fact is I've devoted so many posts to this record because I've devoted so many listening hours to it.

Of all the albums slated to come out this year, this was the one that I had probably highest expectactions for—higher than the Shins, higher than Arcade Fire, higher than the New Pornographers, higher than everything. So to that end it is, yes, a little disappointing. But it's worst fault is really that it is merely great rather than perfect. I'm to a point now where I think I've finally played it too many times—maybe. I'm tired of many of the more upbeat songs; but now some of the quieter tracks are beginning to reveal themselves to me, in particular "So Sorry," "Honey Honey," and "The Park." It just goes to show that I was right in my first impression that this is a record full of individually strong songs, even if the album as a whole still doesn't quite cohere for me.

Joni Mitchell, Court and Spark
I was a Joni Mitchell virgin. I thought I knew what to expect—that voice, going up high when you kinda wish she wouldn't, at least not so often. And yes, she does that. And yes, she squeezes lyrics in where the meter shouldn't allow it. And no, it doesn't always work. But I'll tell you, I really wasn't prepared for Mitchell's excellent guitar skills. She takes her playing to Nick Drake levels—beyond mere folkiness and into true, subtle musicianship. Not to mention the harmonies, the lyrics (some feel dated, others still sharp). It doesn't always work—some of the later songs get a little too loose, a little too jazzy—but when this album is on, as in the case of "Help Me" or "Free Man in Paris," wow, it's on.

LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
I bought this album back in April and, like their last album, I enjoyed some of the songs but not all. It felt weirdly not for me—I don't dance, I don't work out, I don't really do anything that is best-suited to repetitive booty-shakin' beats. Not to mention another part of me wondered: if I'm going to own a dance record, should it be this one? This seems kid tested and hipster approved—in other words, a little fakey.

But I kept listening to it, mostly on random amongst numerous other albums and rarely straight through—a task I found a little too overwhelming. And while some songs have by now died painful deaths as far as my hard drive goes—the title track and the unfortunate "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down"—the rest of the album has burrowed its way in. The opener is brilliant, and it took me about a month of listening before I realized that three of my favorite songs were actually all parts of the same track, "Us v Them" (I blame my slowness on the fact that all this record's repetition begs you to zone out while you're jamming to it). All the way up until this weekend, as I prepared to write this series of posts, I was expecting to put this album in with the "the rest" (come back tomorrow for those), but on one more casual listen as I sat on the 405, I realized that I have a helluva lot more fun with this album than I ever gave it credit for.

How Many Licks Does it Take to Get to the Center of Andrew Bird's Armchair Apocrypha?

One
Though Armchair Apocrypha is Andrew Bird’s seventh album, I’ve managed to never hear him before. My first exposure to him was while my brilliant wife and I were having breakfast at our friends’ house over Thanksgiving.  I liked what I heard but never did get around to picking up one of his albums.

Then a few weeks ago "Heretics" started popping up on the blogs [for that reason I'd post something else, but I'll respect Bird's wishes as indicated in this post]. Coincidentally I came across a new song from the Sea and Cake’s new album on the same day. They were a fitting pair, since both Bird and Sam Prekop share a similar ease of delivery. In fact that pairing colored my first few listens of Bird’s album once I made the purchase. Armchair Apocrypha sounds a bit like what Prekop might be up to these days if he had followed the template he set out with Shrimpboat and early Sea and Cake records—a looser, more acoustic variety of airy pop—rather than following the fork in the road that was the John McEntire–influenced electronics of The Fawn.

The Prekop comparison faded soon enough. For one, Bird’s got pipes. The first half of Bird’s album culminates in the one-two punch of “Armchairs” and “Darkmatter”—the first a mini-opus that stretches Bird’s voice into an emotional territory Prekop has never explored, the second a dynamic rocker of the sort Prekop has never attempted.

Two
By the time I’d picked up the actual album, I’d committed most of “Heretics” to memory. It makes sense that every blog I saw referenced the same song—it’s the most immediate, with its violin hook, catchy chorus, and half-spoken/sung lyrics. The rest of the album on first listen was a bit of a mush. Bird often mumbles his lyrics, and the songs don’t always follow a simple pop structure. Small motifs pop up throughout the album, too, making the whole feel pleasurable yet not quite tangible.

We bought the album just before my wife and I headed out of town for a drive from Los Angeles to Big Sur, most of which is the winding PCH, lush mountains on the left and the Pacific Ocean crashing on the right. Tooling up the coastline on a weekend afternoon may well have been the best way to take in Armchair Apocrypha. It’s not an album you can easily process while doing other things. Not because it’s dense, but because it will pass right by you if you’re not paying attention. Best to relax, enjoy the scenery, and let Bird soundtrack your life.

In fact a Sunday drive is the perfect metaphor for many of the songs and the album as a whole. Bird, without the slightest hint of self-consciousness, winds through his songs without much noticeable effort, not always feeling the need to repeat a melody or follow a standard song structure. The opener, “Fiery Crash,” is a good example. After an intro, verse, and chorus, the song pauses for an overlay of pop-syllables (ba ba ba, etc.); then some whistling—one melody, no repetition, for just a couple bars; too short to be a solo, too singular to be a motif. Then he returns to the verse and chorus. It’s just a little detour. Many other tracks follow a similar path, weaving this way and that without worry for pop structures. As a whole the album is structured with the same ease. The first four tracks are short shots of pop, followed by the emotional peaks of “Armchairs” and “Darkmatter”—either of which (especially “Armchairs”) could function as the album’s closer, if Bird was interested in making the whole thing a steady build to a dramatic climax. But instead we climb the tallest peaks at midpoint, take a break for a short string interlude, then wind back down with the second half, all of which is just a touch slower than the first.

Three
This structure, in the first few listens, makes the album feel longer than it actually is. Actually on one of my first intent listens my iPod malfunctioned and I thought the brief instrumental “The Supine” was the last track. I thought: short, concise album, perfectly plotted. It wasn’t until I returned from Big Sur and I listened to the album again while I took my morning ritual walk that I realized I’d missed four tracks. So I had to process the album all over again, knowing the first two-thirds much better than the last. Suddenly the album began to feel more exhausting. “Armchairs” alone swings up and down emotionally over the course of seven minutes that it really sweeps you up; by the time Bird laments “You never write, you never call / It never crossed your mind at all,” you’re drained. The remaining third of the album, quiet as it is, causes a small amount of discomfort considering how little it moves you compared to the middle of the record.

But that changes. Like the rest of the album, the songs simply take a few listens to reveal themselves to you. It wasn’t long before I found myself looking forward to the lovely chorus of “Scythian Empires,” but reticent to skip past anything lest I miss another lyric I hadn’t heard before.

Four
And that’s the final stage: the lyrics. Outside of sitting down and reading the lyric sheet while the CD plays on my bedroom boombox—frankly something I haven’t done since high school—it takes real concentration to follow Bird’s lines. Not every chorus repeats the same lyrics, not every verse the same melody, and enunciation is not Bird’s primary concern. But after enough of those morning walks with the full album, the content of “Imitosis” starts to come into view; “Plasticities” too, and the rest. You start to see that Bird is having fun with turns of phrase and that most songs wrestle with existential issues (“The fiery crash / is just a finality / or must I explain / it’s a nod to mortality” [“Fiery Crash”], or “Do you want to know where the self resides? / Is it in your head or between your sides?” [“Darkmatter”]).

After a week of listening—in my world, that’s about five to seven spins—the album has gotten fully through the processing stage and now I’m simply enjoying it the way a great pop album deserves to be enjoyed. I’m singing along, whistling along, imitating the violin sounds and nudging my wife every time a lyric comes up that I think is especially cherce. This album was the epitome of a “grower”—but it’s officially grown. Huge thumbs up. You’ll hear me go on about this album more in the future, I’m sure.