The old basketball star walks gingerly on aching knees. Me? My ears ring.
Jon Fine, of the band Bitch Magnet, writes about rock-induced hearing loss for the Atlantic. I'm really glad Bitch Magnet has reunited (temporarily?), though it sounds like they'll only play ATP in Europe and maybe some additional European tour dates. Temporary Residence is reissuing both of their albums in November; they are one of the most overlooked indie bands of the early '90s, so I'm glad to see the albums come back in print. You can find them on Facebook if you want to keep up with tour/reissue updates.
Song of the week so far, for me, is Superchunk's "From the Curve," from On the Mouth. It came up on shuffle yesterday as I was walking home from a stressful day at work and had the dual effect of giving me a little catharsis (as only 90s indie rock really can!) and hooking into the thought that's been going through my head lately of looking for some kind of fresh start, creatively speaking. What that fresh start is, I don't really know.
There are many remarkable aspects to the story of Talk Talk’s fifth and final album, Laughing Stock. It took a year to make, and most of what was put to tape ended up on the scrapheap. In London’s Wessex Studios, where it was recorded, windows were blacked out, clocks removed, and light sources limited to oil projectors and strobe lights. Around fifty musicians contributed to its making, but only eighteen ended up on the finished album. It was a commercial failure, critically reviled as much as it was praised, and was impossible to perform live. Then the band broke up, forcing fans to wait seven years before its central protagonist released any new music, something followed by almost complete silence. Laughing Stock is also shrouded in mystery: apart from limited comments made during brief bursts of promotional activity to promote their own even more limited work since, the three authors of the record – Mark Hollis (songwriter and founder), Tim Friese-Greene (producer and co-songwriter since their third album, The Colour Of Spring) and Lee Harris (drums, and the only other remaining member of the band’s original line up by the time of Laughing Stock) – have refused to discuss it for years. But the music remains, its reputation growing with each passing year since its release two decades ago: stark, bold, indefinable and the greatest testament to the band.
Wyndham Wallace's article on Laughing Stock for the Quietus is a terrific overview of Talk Talk's progression from synthpop hitmakers to unparalleled aesthetes. I only vaguely know the story of Talk Talk and the difficulties in making their last two albums, owing to the fact that I'm a fairly new fan of the albums. After putting off hearing Spirit of Eden for years and years and years (for no real reason), I finally made a point to hear it while I was doing research for my book on Slint's Spiderland, since Spirit gets namechecked along with Spiderland (and Bark Psychosis' Hex) as being a progenitor of post-rock. Though I have a lot of misgivings with that genre tag, and with these albums as being the best appropriate reference points, I still couldn't rightly write about Slint's legacy without hearing these other oft-referenced albums too. Thank god I did! Both Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock are brilliant, brilliant works of art.
As Wallace describes it, I see some parallels between Slint and Talk Talk's crippling level of perfectionism. Slint was only in the studio for Spiderland for four days, but they spent two years laboring over their songs. The songwriting processes between the two bands was worlds apart, but the effect of focusing intensely on a small number of songs seems to have had the same result: the end of the band, and ostensibly the end of some members' music careers entirely.
Anyway, it's a great article and a good introduction to Talk Talk's story if you're not familiar. Both Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock are begging for the reissue treatment, given so many bands referencing their sound of late. Tthe Antlers and Wild Beasts spring to mind first, though Radiohead would be nowhere without Laughing Stock. Listen to "After the Flood": you think Jonny Greenwood's guitar would sound the way it does if he hadn't heard Laughing Stock?
If you've read my book on Spiderland, you know that one of my main arguments in the opening chapter is that the significance of Squirrel Bait in the pre-Slint soup is somewhat overstated, considering David Grubbs wrote the majority of that band's music and lyrics and that Brian McMahan and Britt Walford were not really in the band at the same time. But there's a recorded documentation of Squirrel Bait and all those names are in the liner notes, so there you go. Rather, in my interviews for the book, it was made pretty clear to me that another band had a much more direct tie to Slint: Maurice.
Maurice was a heavy, aggressive metal band originally started by Britt Walford, Brian McMahan, and Ned Oldham and featuring Sean "Rat" Garrison on lead vocals. That early incarnation lasted not very long—Oldham was replaced by a guy named Mike Bucayu (who along with Rat would later form Kinghorse), and McMahan was replaced by David Pajo. I've written a little about this on the blog before, and you can still read an excerpt from the book detailing the earliest period in Slint's history at the 33 1/3 blog.
The thing about Maurice, though, is that they never did any proper recordings, so their place in Slint's history is easy to overlook. That's why I'm happy to report that David Pajo has recently made their one and only demo—recorded on a boombox at the specific request of one Glenn Danzig—available to all.
As with most things Slint-related, you should prepare yourself for something that sounds nothing like Slint whatsoever. Maurice was a metal band. The songs on the demo hardly hint at the Slint you most wish you could have more of (ie, Spiderland). Here and there, like toward the end of "The Struggle," you can hear small hints of things to come on Tweez—Walford's insane drumming and Pajo's compulsive need to play as many artificial harmonics as possible—but even so it's not made transparant that this band might turn into Slint. (It is a fact, however, that the final song Maurice wrote became the first Slint song, "Pat," but this demo predates that song. To my knowledge, the Maurice version of that song was never recorded.) It is worth keeping in mind, though, that everyone playing on this demo was about fifteen years old at the time.
Not to be a shill (okay, a little bit to be a shill), but there are a lot of great stories about Maurice in the book, if you haven't read it, including their brief tour with Samhain, with Will Oldham in tow. (Oldham came close to joining Slint right after the group splintered off from Maurice—can you imagine?) So, you know, go buy the book. And buy the Maurice demo here.
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.)
May got away from me in terms of writing for this blog, unfortunately. Too bad because I acquired a lot of albums I'd meant to write more about. Well, here's the rundown of everything I acquired this month, in the order I got it. In short: this was a month where a lot of past favorites put out new albums, most of which were pretty good but few of which surpassed previous efforts.
Klaus Schulze: Dune Prior to this month I only had one other Schulze album, his first, Irrlicht. It's an extremely dense bit of drone, with three 20-30 minute tracks. For my next dalliance with Schulze I thought I'd skip ahead ten albums to Dune. Though there are more electronic elements here (and a little spoken word on the second track), it's still of a piece with that early material. I like most of it but it's not something I'm going to spin regularly. (Actually, my favorite track here is the bonus track that came with the reissue, "Le Mans"—it's a little more active, relatively speaking.)
Okkervil River: I Am Very Far I had a long period of severe infatuation with Okkervil River a couple of years ago, more or less coinciding with the release of The Stage Names and The Stand Ins. And though I still love those records (and, to a lesser degree, Black Sheep Boy), I also feel myself at or near the stage of having enough Okkervil River. I Am Very Far is a consistently good album that doesn't detract from my love of the last two albums, nor does it build on that love much. Will Sheff is still singing in that moany way that verges on too much if you're not paying attention to his excellent lyrics. Following on the trend of the last two albums, he and the band are upping the ratio of rockers to ballads—a good thing, though sometimes the production takes away from the clarity of the many instruments piled onto each track. I Am Very Far can often seem like a blur—an angsty, rockin', pretty good blur.
Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues I'm an unabashed, unapologetic fan of Fleet Foxes' debut. I was thinking the other day about how it's been a really long time since a new record has really bowled me over from front to back—one of those albums where every song becomes my favorite song over the course of months and months of repeat listens. Fleet Foxes was one of those records for me. That's a lot to live up to. Helplessness Blues is not that kind of album; it's a good record—listen up! it's a good record!—but merely being good in the shadow of an excellent record can't help but feel like a disappointment. A mild disappointment, but a disappointment nonetheless. I've listened to it a lot since buying it and there's little that I outright dislike about it. It's just not EXCELLENT.
My Morning Jacket: Circuital This is, thank God, a positive rebound from the often embarassing Evil Urges, though Circuital is not without its flaws. As on every My Morning Jacket album, there is at least one track that stands among the best they've ever done (even Evil Urges had "Smokin' from Shootin'"). Here it's the title track, an epic seven-minute opus that feels all the more epic in context since it follows the constantly building album opener, "Victory Dance." By "The Day is Coming" you've already been riding high on Circuital for almost a quarter of an hour, and the album sustains that level for a while longer before dropping into the weak middle third—the kinda dumb "Outta My System," the especially awful "Holding onto Black Metal," the generic "First Light." It picks up again for the final portion of the record, going out on a surprisingly subdued note with the back-to-back ballads "Slow Slow Tune" and "Movin' Away." Ending Circuital on a melancholy note is refreshing for this band, but that's about the only thing on the album that is. Maybe by album #6 and year #12, My Morning Jacket doesn't need to reinvent themselves. Circuital is a satisfying album, even if there are a few others in their catalogue (Z and Tennessee Fire, for starters) that are superior.
Wild Beasts: Smother I was not previously familiar with Wild Beasts but I picked up Smother, their third and newest album, on the recommendation of a few people on twitter. I've been playing it pretty consistently since buying it but, aside from the terrific opening track, it's not sinking its teeth into me. The whole album is good but keeps fading into a vague background music regardless of whatever activity I'm going while listening.
Talk Talk: Laughing Stock I made a comment on twitter that Wild Beasts reminded me of the Antlers, to which Matthew Perpetua responded "I can't imagine what Wild Beasts must sound like to you." Once I got past my immediate impression, I realize that I was responding to the hints of Talk Talk on Smother—a band I think the Antlers are also influenced by if in slightly different ways. As I thought about this, I nudged myself into getting Laughing Stock, an album I've been meaning to get for a while now, ever since being bowled over by Spirit of Eden. God, what a beautiful pair of albums these are. They're not terribly dissimilar from each other—I think I might like Spirit of Eden just a hair more, perhaps because I heard it first—but Laughing Stock is among my favorite acquisitions of the year so far.
Mountains: Air Museum I've been looking forward to a new Mountains album for a long time now, and I'm glad to say that Air Museum does not disappoint. It does surprise, however—a hard thing to do for an ambient record! Mountains' last album, Choral, was a glacially pased guitar-oriented album, not too far off from, say, Stars of the Lid. Air Museum, while still working in the same genre, is about 180 degrees from Choral. It's mostly synth-based, and the tones bubble and pulse at a (relatively speaking, mind you) quicker pace. In general the album feels more akin to the new breed of kosmiche acts that have been popping up in recent years that have tickled my ears—Arp, Emeralds, Rene Hell, etc. I'd accuse the duo of trend-hopping if I wasn't so enamoured of this trend.
Peter Bjorn & John: Gimme Some After the let-downs of the last PB&J album and Peter Moren's solo album, I was ready to let Gimme Some pass by. At the urging of my brilliant wife I picked it up, and lo and behold, it's pretty good! While it's not as effortlessly perfect as Writer's Block, there's still a sense that the trio isn't taking themselves too seriously here. The whole first half is fun and effervescent; it dips slightly in the second half, where the songs veer into more guitar-centric rockers, but it recovers again by the last few songs, including the album closer "I Know You Don't Love Me," one of Gimme Some's highlights.
7:00 am: Driving to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl flea market, we listen to our favorite radio show, Chuck Cecil's The Swingin' Years—a show that has been on the air in one place or another for the last fifty-five years. Anyone who lives in L.A. and isn't listening to this show every Saturday and Sunday morning (on 88.1), you're missing out.
8:52am: Sitting at the Rose Bowl food court feeding Coop yogurt while my brilliant wife scopes more booths, there's a DJ playing smooth soul jams.
9:30 am: Driving home. I put on Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam. We make it two songs before agreeing that it's too harsh for our moods right now, so we pull out Clinging to a Scheme again—an album that has become a go-to for long drives and other forms of downtime. We're home by track 7 or so.
11:00 am: Once again listening to all the country music I downloaded in the last week. I'm slowly rating every song and condensing the playlist down to my very favorites, which while eventually be part of a bigger playlist on the blog toward the end of the month.
1:30 pm: Hanging at the house with family, I put on the Top Rated playlist and treat it like a radio. Here's what it played:
2:10 pm: We pause it and go on a family trip to the bookstore, then the park. At the bookstore, swear to god, they're playing the John Williams score to Star Wars.
4:50 pm: My wife leaves to go attend a reading. I'm pointed via Twitter to the bandcamp page for a person/group/entity called Pye Corner Audio, who have a new album called Black Mill Tapes vol. 2. At first I think it's some old, obscure thing—a peer of Raymond Scott or some such—that's been newly unearthed; but the more the record goes on the more apparent it is that this is something made in 2011. Not that it matters, it's pretty good.
5:55 pm: Via tumblr, someone has provided a link to a 1967 album by Gal Costa and Caetano Veloso, which predates both their solo debuts and is basically a samba record, a la my favorite Elis & Tom. It's pretty great. Coop and I listen to it while he has a little post-bath playtime/wind-down.
6:53 pm: Coop asleep and wife not yet home, I put on Zuckerzeit. While I'm listening I make a new playlist that gathers all the krautrock in my collection that skews electronic. I sort it by year so I can perhaps trace the evolution of the sound. Doing so, however, only underlines what's still missing from my collection (earlier Cluster albums, to start; and post-Autobahn Kraftwerk).
7:45 pm: I'm about to start in on Musik von Harmonia—though I probably shouldn't keep playing these two albums back-to-back; I'll never be able to remember which is which—but when my wife returns I switch it to the Caetano & Gal album, because I know she'll dig it. We listen to it as we make dinner, then settle in for some Amazing Race. Happy Sunday.
Twenty years ago this week, Spiderland hit stores like a drop of water in a vast ocean. How we all still know about it (and, for many, revere it) all these years later is a miracle of word of mouth.
On the occasion of the anniversary I did an interview with Adam Trainer of the excellent post-rock radio show out of Australia, Posted, who dedicated a whole two-hour show to the album's anniversary (click on the March 23 episode). The show includes tracks by Slint as well as bands from Slint members both before and after, as well as lots of other groups from the same general universe, interspersed with clips of me in conversation with Trainer about the album and its legacy. You can also hear my interview in full, sans music.
Cooper: This sounds terrible. The production quality, I mean. Did you record this off the radio on your tape deck?
Me: How are you able to make those references?
Cooper: I don’t really know! Maybe one of my past lives is seeping through.
Me: Oh, so you believe in reincarnation. You might like their other album more.
Cooper: This guy is wordy.
Me: Yeah but that’s part of the fun. His lyrics are wild. Really surreal. The first lines are “And the first one tore a picture / of a dead and hanging man / who was kissing foreign fishes / that flew right out from his hands.”
Cooper: Awesome that you’re playing me a song about a dead and hanging man.
Me: Well…
Cooper: That’s sarcasm. I’ve learned sarcasm.
Me: A developmental milestone!
Cooper: I see you know sarcasm too. What are these lyrics? Is he singing about the end of days? Dad, this is some macabre stuff. I think that I too am against sex, if this is what sex is.
Me: Yeah, really I was playing this for you because of the horns.
Cooper: Speaking of—where are the horns?
Me: They’re coming in right now.
Cooper: This song doesn’t touch my fire truck. Over a minute in and the horns are just hitting? My fire truck song is ten seconds long and it’s all awesome. Let’s listen to that instead.
Me: Okay okay. Maybe you’ll like this other one better. It’s from their second album, In the Aeroplane over the Sea.
Cooper: Planes!
Me: Yeah, planes!
Cooper: I love planes. Can you take me outside so I can point at planes?
Cooper: It’s kind of the same thing. Still sounds awful. Is that even a guitar?
Me: It’s just an aesthetic choice! Go with it. The horns come in a little sooner on this one.
Cooper: Hmm, very mariachi.
Me: Yes!
Cooper: Sort of a different style from what I’m used to. What I’m used to being the fire truck song.
Me: You gotta open your horizons. Maybe you'd like Beirut?
Cooper: Ugh, faux Eastern European gypsy bullshit.
Me: Language!
Cooper: Dad, these songs pale in comparison to the fire truck song. That song is straight and to the point and fun and boisterous. This guy is whiney and has a voice like a dirty diaper.
Me: He’s an acquired taste I suppose.
Cooper: Also there’s way less horns in these songs than you promised there would be.
Me: I’m realizing that as I play them for you. In my mind I really associate that long, clownish sort of trombone sound with this band.
Cooper: It’s not like that in reality though. It’s really just all about Mr. Hard Poops whining forever.
Me: One last song—an instrumental.
Cooper: Fine. But then we listen to the fire truck again. Eight times.
Me: This one’s more about the bagpipes than the trombones.
Cooper: Weird. Weird! Weird! I am attracted to this and yet it kind of scares me. This is like the musical equivalent to our ceiling fan. I love it but I'm also uncomfortable and unsure.
A confluence of Low references on various message boards, twitter feeds, blogs, and actual conversations has got me thinking about the band again. After going back and re-reading what I wrote about all their albums and EPs released between 1994 and 2001, I started to feel winsome—the way you feel when you start thinking about someone who used to be your best friend but for some reason, no real reason, you lost touch.
So I've been attempting to get back in touch with the band. I downloaded Trust, which is the first Low album I didn't pay attention to upon release. It's a good album, not deserving of my ignorance. I'd always thought of it as being the first Low album that just kinda sounded like other Low albums, but I realize now that's not the case. It's a tense record. It's the first one they'd done where they let multiple songs stretch to great lengths. It broods like other Low songs brood, but it broods a lot. There are a few light moments, relatively speaking—"La La La Song," for instance—but for the most part Trust strikes me as a spacious and dark album.
I don't know the record that well yet, to be honest. I still feel like we're trying to reconnect with each other. We've both grown, we're different people. Did we have differences before? Was that why we lost touch? Or did I just move away? I have The Great Destroyer and Drums and Guns on my eventual to-buy list too. I've heard select tracks from each and had previously thought they were okay, or bad. But for some reason I feel I want to try again. Oh, also, the new album. C'mon. They just dropped a track from that record, "Try to Sleep," which is lovely.
Coincidentally I had my iTunes library on shuffle the other day and "Venus" came on, which was originally a 7" single from 1997 and is now found on the Lifetime of Temporary Relief set. I hadn't heard it in a long time but it's really just a great little pop song. Which got me thinking about all the other great little pop songs they've done. So perhaps in response to the edginess of Trust, or because of hearing "Venus," or due to my enjoyment of "Try to Sleep," or simply of the spirit of trying to reignite an old friendship, I made a playlist of a bunch of my favorite "poppy" Low songs.
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.
The first chapter of my book on Spiderland deals with the primordial period in Slint's history, discussing the obvious touchstone of Squirrel Bait (who Dave Grohl just singled out in a list of great 80s hardcore songs for Rolling Stone), but also the less renowned pre-Slint bands the Languid and Flaccid, Solution Unknown, and Maurice. Since the book doesn't contain any images or (duh) audio, consider this a supplement to that first chapter.
The original pre-Slint band was the Languid and Flaccid, formed by classmates Britt Walford and Brian McMahan when they were in 6th grade. Also in the band was Will Oldham's older brother, Ned, and two other friends, Stephanie Karta and Paul Catlett. You can read an excerpt from the book at the 33 1/3 blog which goes into some detail on this band. I'm not aware of any recordings existing for this band, but here's an amazing picture of the group hanging out outside the Beat Club before an all-ages matinee (via Louisville Punk).
L-R: Britt Walford, Stephanie Karta, Ned Oldham, Brian McMahan, Paul Catlett
By the time the band reached junior high, the Languid and Flaccid splintered into two projects, with Walford, McMahan, and Oldham forming a second group, Maurice. This was a much more aggressive and heavy band, and eventually the Languid and Flaccid evaporated.
Maurice was fronted by Sean "Rat" Garrison, who I interviewed in depth for the book. He is such a strong personality, and eminently quotable (I think my favorite was "Music is like being on a viking ship; I have come to humiliate you with my band!"); his presence in the book definitely makes this early chapter much more vivid, especially since awareness of Maurice doesn't really extend beyond Louisville.
Maurice quickly turned into a kind of incubator for ideas that would later wind up in Slint. Both Oldham and McMahan left the band early on, replaced by Mike Bucayu and David Pajo. It was the collaboration between Walford and Pajo in this band that eventually led to the creation of Slint.
I've done my best to describe Maurice's music in the book. They began as a straightforward hardcore band, then morphed into a metal band with lots of flashy guitar solos, before ultimately evolving into something more odd and obtuse—essentially Tweez-era Slint but with a screaming rage-aholic on the mic. This description is based partly on a few demos and live songs I've heard and partly on descriptions of the band given to me by Garrison, Pajo, and Todd Brashear, who was a fan of the band before he knew any of them personally.
Unfortunately I don't have any Maurice audio which I'm at liberty to upload, but given Garrison's strong presence in the book I wanted to at least give a sample of what he sounded like, so you could imagine this voice over a song like, say, "Charlotte" or "Warren." So, in lieu of Maurice, here are a couple of samples from Kinghorse, the band Garrison and Bucayu formed after Maurice broke up. Kinghorse was positively huge in the Louisville scene, pulling in hundreds and hundreds of kids to their shows and eventually landing a record deal with Caroline Records. Their debut album was produced by Glenn Danzig, who Garrison was chummy with (as readers of the book will learn, Maurice did a short string of dates around the Midwest opening for Samhain). "Caged" is a track from that debut. The video below is an early version of a song called "Freeze," performed at the legendary Louisville club Tewligan's Tavern (now known as "Cahoots" and quite a bit less legendary) back in Kinghorse's formative days.
Toward the end of Maurice's run, the bassist Mike Bucayu decided to start a second band in which he could put forth more of his own songwriting ideas (Maurice's songs were totally controlled by Walford and Pajo). The band was Solution Unknown, and David Pajo joined up as well—as the drummer. Midway into this band's brief run, Todd Brashear joined up as second guitarist. This band was in many ways formed as a reaction to Maurice, who were venturing into weirder and weirder musical territory. Innovation was absolutely not the name of the game in Solution Unknown. They really just wanted to be a hardcore band that whipped large crowds of kids into a frenzy. They recorded one album, Karen, with Don Zientarra.
Concurrent with Maurice, Squirrel Bait was making its name in the Louisville and national scene. The band, I feel, is given too much credit for leading to Slint. The majority of the songs, both music and lyrics, were written by David Grubbs. People see the liner notes to their self-titled debut and see both Britt Walford and Brian McMahan's names and thus jump to the conclusion that that if half of Slint was in the band, it follows that Slint evolved from here. It's really not true. In fact Walford and McMahan were never in the band at the same time. Walford was in the group only briefly—long enough to record a demo which was never released. A year later, well after Walford was gone, the band pulled two tracks from this demo to add to their debut because they couldn't afford to re-record them. Here's another track from that same demo, which didn't end up on any official Squirrel Bait albums. You can clearly hear how the band was much more influenced by hardcore in these early recordings.
McMahan joined the group after that demo was recorded and Ben Daughtery was brought in as the group's permanent drummer. Still, he wasn't the primary songwriter. His only songwriting credit on the debut, to my knowledge, was the opening track, "Hammering So Hard." The rest came from David Grubbs—about which I'll say more in a future post.
I'm not sure what triggered it but I suddenly had a yearning to delve back into old-school releases from Kranky. Only problem is I don't have much in my iTunes library. I was heavy into vinyl around the same time I was heavy into Kranky, and what I still own from the label is mostly tucked away with my other records. So here's a quickly assembled collection of youtube videos, for the hell of it.
First, some good news: my Spiderland book is pretty much done. I'll be sending my final edit back to Continuum this week and then it's off to the printer. It will be out in November (and it looks like you can already pre-order it!).
I've been working on this book in one way or another for almost two years now, going back to when the idea of the pitch first occurred to me at the end of 2008, to finding out I got the deal in spring 2009, to researching and writing that summer, then conducting my interviews in the fall, then writing, re-writing, and re-re-rewriting all winter and spring (taking into account one major distraction).
In thinking about Slint and the context in which Spiderland existed—both as a culmination of influences from the 80s and an influence itself in the 90s—my head has been fully re-immersed in the music of my teenage and college years for a while now. Not only have I been revisiting a lot of my personal touchstones (obvious acts like Fugazi, less obvious acts like Craw, etc.), but I've also been getting better acquainted with bands and albums that didn't resonate with me then but clearly loomed large for other people—Dinosaur Jr., Pavement, etc. None of this specifically factored into the book itself, other than to get me into what I felt was the proper headspace in which to write.
All of this is to say that looking back on the 90s has been on my mind for a long time now. Reading Pitchfork's Top 200 Tracks of the 90s list last week underlined for me something I'd already identified about myself—"my 90s" are not really the 90s that are being canonized. I mean, yeah, Slint was on the list and so were a lot of other bands I was into. But a lot weren't. And as far as Pavement topping the list goes, for me personally it just doesn't resonate at all. Yet I don't really want to argue it, in part because I think something Matthew Perpetua said last week is true:
I have been steeped in Pavement fandom for more than half of my life now and “Gold Soundz” always just seemed like the Pavement song, the one that really communicated what was so special about them. You can argue about what the best one is — it’s definitely not my personal favorite — but that’s the one that sums it up and always has a lot of appeal for casual listeners. I think it’s also the indie rock song. If someone is like “hey, what the fuck is indie rock?”, you could play “Gold Soundz” and they’d have a pretty good sense of it. So given that Pitchfork is ultimately an indie-oriented site, it makes perfect sense that the #1 song of the 90s is by the artist that will always define the indie rock of the 90s.
I could split hairs and maybe point to something by Sebadoh as the quintessential "indie rock" song, but at any rate this gets at something I felt even in the 90s. "Indie Rock" was both generic and specific. I listened to indie rock, but I didn't listen to Indie Rock, as described the way Matthew does above. I listened to post-rock, space-rock, and slowcore. My friends listened to emo—both the Mineral/Christie Front Drive variety and the Shotmaker/Indian Summer variety. There was powerviolence and all the San Diego/Gravity Records stuff. There was twee—Sarah Records, Trembling Blue Stars. There was straightedge and metalcore. Krishna-core! Pop punk, ska. There were weird prolific acts about whom I knew very little other than that there were super hardcore fans who bought it all: Coil, Azuza Plane, Muslimguaze, Namlook, Laswell. There was noise. There were awesome German labels like Haus Musik, Kollapse, and Payola—there was a whole scene in Germany that was like a doppleganger to the incestuous Chicago scene. There was IDM, drum and bass, illbient—illbient!—acid jazz. There were alt country giants like the Jayhawks and Uncle Tupelo. That doesn't even get at the stuff the Pitchfork list covered fairly well—alternative, hip hop, straightahead indie. And even still, there was more.
Even though it caused a little cognitive dissonance seeing Boyz II Men and Len on a list that also included Refused and Bonnie "Prince" Billy, I still grasped why Pitchfork's list was all over the map, and I commend them for trying to grapple with the layers upon layers of music, both mainstream and underground, in one catchall. I wouldn't think to put Bell Biv Devoe's "Poison" on a list for my 90s, but it certainly was pervasive when I was in eighth grade in 1990 and I definitely watched the video all the time, and to this day will sing, totally unprovoked, "smack it, flip it, rub it down"—so I guess that means something.
Still, the list can't help but fail if it's trying to identify all the different directions music went in during that decade. And the inevitable downside to that is that lots of music that belongs to genres that today, for now, aren't as in vogue, get pasted over.
I can't begin to paint a better portrait of the 90s, but I can offer up a playlist for you. These are twenty-five songs that meant something to me during that formative decade. Consider this a mixtape and not a ranked list. For that matter, these aren't my top twenty—I made a point to stick to one song per artist (with one exception), as well as to omit any artist who was included on Pitchfork's list, for the sake of variety. I also eliminated any songs that I happened to put on this playlist not long ago—though all of those songs should be considered here too (eg Craw, Karp, and Unwound). Lastly, if you want an even more in-depth look at my 90s, I recommend you head over to my currently dormant blog Do You Compute—start at the oldest post and go forward.
Re my tangent toward the end of this morning's post: feels like a cheat to talk about some lost album of sixteen years yore and not give a taste. So here's a track from the album.
Tangent: earlier this week Shiny Grey Monotone posted an album from 94, Morsel’s Noise Floor, which I fucking loved at the time but have not heard in probably ten or twelve years. During my year-long bout of 90s re-immersion I went looking for Noise Floor on the web but couldn’t find it—neither the album nor the band were terribly well-known back then—so I was pretty stoked to find it this week. I listened to it twice yesterday and had all kinds of reactions to it, including but not limited to: a) this is not as good as I remember it being; b) this is rad; c) oh yeah, Avey Tare didn’t invent weird vocal effects; d) this sounds a little dated but I feel like in one or two years there will be a lot of bands who happen to sound a lot like this.
In other words my enjoyment of Noise Floor is basically Nitsuh’s point made real. I think there’s some value in Noise Floor but I also wouldn’t expect people coming to it cold in 2010 to regard it as a lost classic. I'll always find pleasure in it, though.
Here's another taste, just to bring out a little more of their weirdness:
This mix is firstly a reflection of what I've been listening to lately—too much work + too much stress + not enough decompression = a strong desire to listen to ass-kicking music from the era in my life when I most felt some urge to kick ass, in a primal sort of way. Not that I was ever that primal of a person. Or an ass-kicker an any remotely literal sense of the phrase.
Secondly it's an extension of the question I asked the other day: could there ever be another Fugazi? Likewise could there ever be another Drive Like Jehu? Another Karp? Another Jesus Lizard? Do these successors exist and I'm just deaf to them because I have no need for others in my life? Probably. Probably I'm just a nostalgic crank. At the same time, these songs inspire me to say, simply and directly, screw you—I don't care!
Listening to a little bit of #1 Record and a little bit of Radio City and a little bit of Third/Sister Lovers reminds me how varied Big Star were from record to record, and how vague it can be to describe their influence. To say they inspired the "power pop" genre is true enough, but also takes a narrow view of the band—one that begins and ends with Radio City, if not simply "September Gurls." What about all those 70s rockisms of the first album? What about the gentleness of a song like "Thirteen"? What about the morose, sometimes bizarrely morose, songs that crop up over and over on Third?
Here are eight songs that I pulled out of my iTunes library that, to me, contain the spirit of some element of Big Star. There are tons more, but here's what I got so far.
1. It started with burning out on everyone's end of year/end of decade lists, which began in August and are still going strong in some corners of my RSS reader. All that Radiohead, all that Animal Collective! Never mind the Arcade Fire and the LCD Soundsystem and the Dirty Projectors and the Grizzly Bear. God, even the stuff I liked in the first place I was beginning to dislike. It brought home in an acute way both how much and how little my tastes align with Pitchfork. It doubly brought home how redundant most blogs I read are—how much they echo Pitchfork, how much they hold their noses at Pitchfork, how much they watch Pitchfork like its ratings were horses rounding the track on Derby Day. That's partly how it started.
2. It started with that Bear in Heaven album, Beast Rest Forth Mouth, which is not a bad record but is also just frustrating enough to not be a great record, either. I knew nothing about Bear in Heaven before hearing one of their songs in a Cargo Culte mix and being knocked out by it. Then ten minutes later I came across another song by them—someone I follow on tumblr posted it, I can't remember who. Anyway I liked it and I was itchy for something new so I downloaded the album. First impression was a good one. I thought, "this guy who is clearly a solo artist making a rad record in his bedroom is doing some cool shit and has a lot of promise." But then I read that they're not a solo bedroom project but a full band, which made me revise my thought to "dude, these guys need to tell their singer he doesn't always need to be front and center. He could stand to take a piss break here and there and let the music stretch out a little." That doesn't exactly lessen the bottom line—Bear in Heaven has promise, yes—but nevertheless the more I listened to BRFM the more critical I became and the less imaginative it felt. The reverb'd vocals, the electroni-rock vibe, the moodiness of the whole thing. Bear in Heaven have some great tracks like "Deafening Love" and "You Do You," but they don't do enough to rise above their genre. Whatever genre that is; I didn't listen to anything in 2009, I don't think, that fell under this tag "glo-fi" or "chillwave" or whatever. I mean, I don't think I did. Did I? Listening to Bear in Heaven I started to think maybe I'd officially heard something in that genre but I can't be sure. You tell me.
3. It started when I was trying to make my own end of year list and couldn't come up with more than two albums from 2009 that I felt were worthy of shouting from the rooftops. It occurred to me that it couldn't be 2009's fault, or music's fault; it had to be mine.
4. It started with the For Carnation's 2000 self-titled album, which I've been listening to a lot in the last year. Though the album features an ex-Slint guy, and I did start listening to it again because of the book I'm writing, the For Carnation and its records factor into my book exactly not at all. I just started craving it. It's such a minimally played album—as in, the musicians play simple things, slowly and simply; not that it's under-heard and under-appreciated, though that's true too. The patience on display on that record, the restraint, is quite lovely. I used to get off on bands that did this kind of thing all the time, and in fact a band like the For Carnation was a real gateway drug for me; in the late 90s I segued pretty naturally from slowcore and post-rock acts to space rock and ambient artists—basically everything Kranky records put out, more or less. But somewhere a few years ago I stopped pursuing new bands or artists that were trading in that kind of music; and my turntable broke so a lot of those artists I loved became inaccessible. It's shameful, I know, that the turntable is still broken. But I digress: the point is, I had this epiphany: remember ambient? remember drone? remember space rock?
5. It started with a couple end of year lists I read after all the genre fatigue had set in. Specifically, the lists at Coke Machine Glow and Swan Fungus. For some reason I paused at CMG's rundown on Mountains' album, Choral (released this year on Thrill Jockey—another label I once devoured but have not diligently kept track of for years). And Swan Fungus—well, that dude's list basically kept me buzzing for a whole afternoon.
So that's how it all started. What happened was, I've spent the last month basically turning my back on indie rock and a lot of blogs I'd previously kept an eye on (not all of them, and probably not yours) in exchange for immersing myself in ambient, drone, electronica, etc.—both new and old. I say this with full awareness of the fact that I played the crap out of the new Vampire Weekend last week and I look forward to hearing the new Spoon posthaste. But to my head these are feeling like the exceptions and not the rules. My listening habits have been diverted lately. Whether it's just a phase or not, I don't know. More on this subject soon.
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.
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.
A week or two back when I took in Moon—excellent movie, by the way—I saw the preview for a new documentary called It Might Get Loud. The premise is simple: Jimmy Page, the Edge, and Jack White all get together and talk guitar. They jam. They discuss their approach to the instrument. Their egos drape over them like suits of armor. Here's the trailer:
Though I'm not a big fan of any of these guys or their bands, the doc still looks appealing to me. It seems like it's trying to get at the craft of playing the guitar rather than a full-on cock-off. I've rarely seen movies (documentaries or fiction) that truly capture what it feels like to make music or to think about music—that giddy feeling you get when you put the right two chords together or eke a new sound out of your instrument by hitting a string in a certain way or finding the perfect balance between your effects pedals and your own playing ability. There's this incommunicable joy in making music—different from writing songs or listening to an album or seeing a show. Onceis probably the last great movie to get at this feeling. And my hopes are up for this film, too.
That said, I know I'll leave this film at least a little unfulfilled because I really am not a fan of any of these guys—them, their bands, or their playing styles. I was joking with my wife that I'd love to see a do-over of this documentary that instead features Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, Kevin Shields, and J. Mascis. If you want to get inter-generational then bring in John Cale and Lou Reed and Tom Verlaine. Talk to Ian Williams of Don Caballero and Battles. Maybe Bradford Cox of Deerhunter or David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors for the latest generation. (I didn't mention this in my Dirty Projectors take last week, but I do really respond to Longstreth's guitar playing—it's probably my favorite aspect of Bitte Orca).
I've talked about my favorite kind of guitarists before; they're the guys who focus as much (if not more) on textures as on technical ability. I was reminded of my bias all over again when I saw that trailer, then a week later picking up US Maple's 1999 album Talker. I haven't heard Talker for a good eight or nine years, but returning to it just reminded me all over again how brilliant this band was. Sure, they didn't make the kind of records you want to put on at a summer barbecue—Al Johnson's voice might the quintessential acquired taste—but fuck if they're not geniuses when it comes to sheer musicianship. Every US Maple song feels like it's held together by paste and band-aids. Each player—Pat Sampson on drums and Mark Shippy and Todd Rittman on guitars—feels like he wants to walk off in a different direction, yet they somehow adhere just enough to keep their songs moving forward. They never devolve into aimless noise.
If you ever watch tennis then you've probably heard the commentators say that a player has "great touch" or "great hands." What they mean is the player has a skill and finesse in his game that goes way beyond a monster serve or a power forehand. A player with great touch knows how to adjust the pace of a match mid-point, to shift from defense to offense, to place a shot anywhere on the court with as much delicacy as it requires. (If you watched this weekend's Roddick/Federer classic then you can see it: Federer has amazing touch; Roddick not as much.) This is a good analogy for what I love in a great guitarist. Great touch. They know how to go out of tune gracefully, they know the difference between volume and intensity—not always related—and they know when to play loose and to when to stay tight. When I listen to US Maple I can practically visualize Shippy and Rittman's fingers on their fretboards, applying pressure—but not too much, almost none at all—to the strings as they alternately stumble and shimmy through a track. White, Page, and the Edge warn that "it might get loud"—to me that's like a tennis player (Ivo Karlovic or Andy Roddick, say) claiming that they'll beat you with their serve. Okay guys, let it get loud. A loud, ripping bluesy solo can have its magic, but it doesn't tell me you have great touch.
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.
I had a Tortoise marathon all day Saturday while I wrote/cleaned house: Gamera, Tortoise, Millions Now Living, TNT, Standards, and It's All Around You. I downloaded Standards and It's All Around You last week—the former I haven't heard since around when it came out in 2001, and the latter I've never heard. Should be interesting to hear them now. This is all partly in anticipation of their new record, Beacons of Ancestorship, and partly because my head has been so wrapped up in 90s post-rock lately—half nostalgia, half research.
I really haven't spent much time with Tortoise in the last eight or nine years, though for a long time I found their albums packed with epiphanies. It's interesting to hear them now, in chronological order. "Gamera" and "Cliff Dwellers' Society," their debut 12" is still an exciting record, and strongly hints at what was to come on their second full-length, Millions Now Living will Never Die. They're more layered than what the group did on their self-titled album, though I'd argue that the aesthetic decisions they made on Tortoise—to simply make a record based around a rock band's rhythm section—remain more unique, if only due to the simplicity of concept.
It was Millions, though, that has always been regarded as the big aesthetic leap for the band. When that record came out I remember everyone (including me) just freaking out for it, especially "Djed." It's still an outstanding track, as is much of the album. But time and distance have made it seem less other-worldly than I remember feeling at the time. TNT, too. I think it's me and not the records, but hearing some of these tracks now makes me much more keenly aware than I was back then of just how into their own record collections these guys were. It's a critique that's chased Tortoise for most of their career—much of their sound dabbles in dub here, drum and bass there, jazz here, Ennio Morricone and Steve Reich there. TNT especially—that album, more than the others, has a real jack-of-all-trades vibe. Not that that necessarily takes away from what the band was doing! It still adds up to something altogether different from everyone else. I can't imagine another band that has more fun, purely from a playing/jamming/writing perspective, then Tortoise must. (I'd like to think they enjoy it, at least. Sometimes songwriting can be excruciating.)
Hearing Standards and It's All Around You back to back—both ostensibly for the first time—is an interesting culmination of the afternoon's listening; perhaps it's only my fresh first impression, perhaps the lack of nostalgia brought to these two. They seem like two sides of one coin: Standards is a terrifically cohesive record; unlike the buffet of sounds and influences that is TNT and, to a lesser extent, Millions, Standards sounds like the band settled on what they wanted to sound like—it's Tortoise, not Tortoise's tastes. The group plays with confidence throughout, all seemingly focused on the same sonic end-goal. (Does that make it their best album? No, but it's still good.) It's All Around You, on the other hand, starts strong but quickly fades into a kind of pantomime, as if the band were trapped by what they thought they were supposed to sound like. (Mind you, my feelings on both of these records are based on one listen.) Hearing them back to back illustrates the fine line a band with a strong, unique aesthetic surely must walk (my recent posts on Low got at the same idea).
It's easy to get trapped by your own sound: these are the instruments we use (vibes!), this is the tempo, this is the frequency. Finding freedom of experimentation—or, barring that, unadulterated confidence and absence of laziness—gets harder and harder as a band makes more and more albums. I haven't heard Beacons yet, other than a couple tracks. It seems promising though; even if the group is to the point where they're content to walk that fine line, let's hope they know which side they're on.
In the meantime, here's a retrospective mix for you. Enjoy.
Low Week at Do You Compute has ended. As I re-posted the first entry here, so I'll re-post the conclusion as well. I really enjoyed going deep into these records this week and I hope you followed along. Here's a quick rundown of everything that went up:
It’s 1997. Low is on tour, playing Tempe for the second time in less than a year. The first time was the very same week Transmission was released; they opened for Soul Coughing and were roundly booed throughout their set. This time—right around when The Curtain Hits the Cast came out—the setting is more appropriate. Low are the headliners, playing a record store packed with about 100 devoted (and silent) fans. It’s an amazing show. Among other things, Sparhawk—wearing a GodheadSilo t-shirt, by the way—reveals that the album version of “Words” is actually “the fast version.”
When the show is over I head for the stage, where their merchandise is scattered on the ground. No new music—I’ve already got all the LPs, EPs, and 7”s they’re hawking. I do notice a bright, sea-blue t-shirt lampooning the poster for the movie Jaws: the great white lunges ferociously up from the ocean with the word “LOW” written above in bright orange all-caps lettering. It’s sort of a genius t-shirt, if a little ugly. I don’t buy it.
*
It’s 1999 and I’ve met a brilliant girl. Among other ways we discover we’re meant for each other, there is an exchange of music and musical ideas. She introduces me to Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Buckley, and Fred Astaire; I introduce her to Cat Power, Ida, and Low. I had a cassette at the time that I kept in my car—it was all of Low’s 7”s and b-sides collected together. “I Started a Joke,” “Venus,” “No Need,” “Lord, Can You Hear Me?”. One of their earliest b-sides was from a food-themed compilation released around the time of their first album; the song was called “Peanut Butter Toast and American Bandstand.” We’d sing that one together.
It’s strange to think that I’ve fallen out of love with Low. Or, more accurately, that I’ve stopped keeping up. Maybe it was inevitable: three of my posts this week implied that I was anticipating the moment Low would become predictable. What made Low one of the seminal indie bands of the 90s was that they triumphed in the face of that anticipation so many times. Perhaps that’s why Things We Lost in the Fire, from 2001, was ultimately the last Low album I was to buy. It wasn’t a bad record by any means—I’ve heard some say it’s among their best—but for me, who’d been on board with everything they did for seven years running, it was the first release that sounded… like Low. It was good, but it wasn’t a revelation.
*
It’s Christmas of 1999 and we’ve been together for all of six months. Low release their Christmas EP and my brilliant girlfriend brings it over. The first song, “Just Like Christmas,” is unlike anything the group had ever done before! For one thing, someone is playing a full drum set. Better yet, it sets my brilliant girlfriend off on a tear of Christmas joy. She dances around the apartment and plays the song over and over.
I just listened to Things We Lost in the Fire for the first time in at least six years, maybe longer. It really is a fine album. It’s almost cruel of me to say it had to be “a revelation” in order for me to stick with them. But that’s the bar they’d set. The album was again produced by Steve Albini, and it’s clear the group had reached a level of comfort with the sound they’d begun honing three years earlier on Songs for a Dead Pilot. The biggest difference on this album was the addition of Mimi Parker’s sister, who had previously added her voice to “Long Way Around the Sea” from their Christmas EP. The harmonies throughout Fire are therefore much sweeter, hewing closer to the vibe of frequent tourmates Ida. It’s a nice effect, and its sweetness juxtaposes against the fact that this album might be the darkest record Low had made to date. Tracks like “Whore” and “Embrace” and “Kind of Girl” feel like Low are walking a line right at the edge of darkness.
It’s 2000 and my brilliant girlfriend has a present for me. It’s a t-shirt I once saw at a Low concert three years earlier. Apparently earlier that year, when Low were in town touring on Secret Name, she approached Alan Sparhawk and described the shirt to him. He told her they still had some back home, gave her his phone number, and told her to call him once they finished their tour. She called him a few months later and he sent the shirt.
*
I have a hard time listening to Cat Power. Old Cat Power, new Cat Power, whatever. Everything about Cat Power just reminds me of a down time in my life and it’s simply no fun to listen to her. I can recognize the genius that is Moon Pix, but I can’t bear to hear more than one song at a time.
I don’t have the same issue with Low, though I listened to their music at the same time (longer, actually, which might be the reason they’re still okay). Still, the period in which I stopped listening to new Low albums happens to coincide with the period in which I became much happier. I stopped listening to Cat Power around the same time. Writing these posts this week it occurs to me that my love of Low happens to coincide with the period in my life in which I went from my first girlfriend to getting married, and whatever transpired in between. Is that a coincidence? Did I lose interest in Low because they had become predictable, or because I had overcome a kind of sadness I wasn’t ever fully aware of?
*
It’s late September 2001. Our families have stepped onto airplanes—a brave and awkward thing to do that month, that year—in order to come to Tempe to see us married. We were three weeks removed from a world-changing tragedy in New York, one month shy of our own life-changing move to New York, and smack in the middle of the most important day of our lives. We were married. We kept the wedding small and intimate: at our house, with our friends and family taking care of the food and the music and photography and decor. It was in many ways a very simple event—the ceremony itself took, I think, about ten minutes—but of course also very profound. This year will be our eighth anniversary. Next month, in about three weeks actually, we will have known each other for ten years—approximately a third of our lifetimes. We still sing “Peanut Butter Toast and American Bandstand.”
At the reception we did our first dance to “Two-Step,” by Low. It was the start of a new chapter.
This week at Do You Compute is dedicated to Low. Each day will be focused on one of their first six releases—I Could Live in Hope, Long Division, Transmission, The Curtain Hits the Cast, Songs for a Dead Pilot, and Secret Name. I'm re-posting yesterday's posts here, combined into one. Head over there today for more on I Could Live in Hope and Long Division, and more posts on the group through Friday.
It’s 1994 and I’m still stumbling through the bins at Tower Records in Fresno, California, still fumbling my way away from metal and toward indie and punk. By now I’ve found heavy bands like Craw or Dazzling Killmen that aren’t stereotypical metal, and I’ve found labels like Dischord (Fugazi, Hoover, Nation of Ulysses) and Touch and Go (Slint, Shellac). But still I don’t have a real road map of where to go next, what key bands I’m missing. So I scour the bins at Tower looking for album covers that jump out at me. That’s how I found Low.
What was it about the cover for I Could Live in Hope? Its brown tone, the simple type treatment, the photograph of the child at his desk blurring into the single-color background, It wasn’t the cartoonishly violent imagery of metal nor the crisply designed sleeves of Dischord albums. I had no idea what this band Low sounded like, but the cover was quiet. The band’s name was an adjective, an emotion, a tone, all summed up in three letters. The album title was a strange mixture of optimism and despair—I could live in hope. It was also an evocative image—to exist inside of, be enveloped by, a single feeling. I turned the CD over and read the track list—eleven one-word titles that was like a grocery list of permanent immersion into some kind of oblivion:
Words Fear Cut Slide Lazy Lullaby Sea Down Drag Rope Sunshine
Yet, simply by looking at the front and back cover, it didn’t seem like a record filled with darkness. The cover’s first impression isn’t that it will be a bleak experience. Imagine if the overriding color was black, not brown, and everything else—the band name, the album title, the track list—remained. The whole record would feel like a suicide note. “Cut,” “Fear,” “Rope”—it’s all a signifier for deep depression. But instead, thanks to that light brown color, the record seems more closely tethered to the few bright words—“Hope,” “Lullaby,” “Sunshine.”
I had to buy the record. It begged to be heard, to be understood. When I put it on that evening, I was surprised to find that it was beautiful.
I Could Live in Hope could not have felt more different from everything I’d ever heard up to that point. It was never loud, never fast, never distorted, barely dynamic in that loud/quiet Slint sense (save perhaps “Lullaby,” which builds over ten minutes from a halting six-note arpeggio to an almost boisterous guitar solo). The vocals, unlike so many other indie bands of the era, were clean and up front in the mix, unadorned except for a shimmering layer of reverb. Yet it was more than a simple “quiet” record. Its tone and structure were different from the folk records I’d grown up on or the somber moments on albums like Ten or Automatic for the People. Though I know now that Low had a few precedents—Galaxie 500 and Red House Painters must factor into the conversation, surely—I Could Live in Hope felt entirely unique to me; I was compelled to listen to it religiously for the better part of my senior year in high school.
This record was my sea change. This was the album that attuned my ears to smaller details in songs, to a depth of emotion and thought that was largely lost in the loud and aggressive music of my past. I already owned records by the likes of Slint and Codeine, both of which were also seminal records for me, but I Could Live in Hope keyed into something different.
*
Low: Words
Everything seems louder at night, when all the ambient noise in your life seems to go away—traffic dies down, birds stop singing, dogs stop barking, sprinklers stop running, TVs and radios are off, every door in your house is closed. When you play your stereo in the day you put the volume at six or seven so it feels comfortable to your ears. At night, six or seven is positively cacophonous. Two or three feels more than appropriate.
I’d owned I Could Live in Hope for a couple of months by now. I played it every night as I lay down to go to sleep: a quiet record, played quietly, at the quietest time of the day. It was one of these nights where I noticed for the first time, laying there in the darkness, that I couldn’t hear the kick drum. I listened intently for it over the course of three or four songs in a row—I just couldn’t hear it.
I got up. I turned on a light—light allows you to be louder—and I turned the stereo up. Still there was no kick drum, nor any toms, nor high hat. Eleven songs, each propelled by snare and ride cymbal, nothing more.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'"
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.
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.
Picking up where yesterday's post left off, the flipside to taking my time, letting my discovery of music happen in what I've manipulated myself into thinking is an organic way, is that sometimes I come across albums that make me punch myself in the face for not hearing ten or fifteen years ago. The last time I felt that acutely was when I heard Television's Marquee Moon for the first time three or four years ago. The album was like discovering a missing link in my musical awakenings as a seventeen-year-old in Fresno who was flipping his wig over the Rollins Band's punk/blues jams and Drive Like Jehu's precision-focused fury. Marquee Moon would have sent me over the moon back then! When I listen to that album I think about what it would have led me to. I probably would have gotten much deeper into the 70s New York scene—Talking Heads, Richard Hell, Patti Smith. It might have eventually led me to the No Wave New York of Mars, DNA, Glenn Branca. All stuff I eventually dipped into (but have never been obsessive about), but what if I had discovered it all when I was still at my most impressionable? Who knows.
The same has happened more recently with Mission of Burma, a band like Television that I'd heard about starting back in my earliest days of caring about this music, but who I just never got around to hearing for no good reason. Well, one good reason is that I don't think their albums were in print, or at least available in my record stores, during the years I was in high school and college; but that still doesn't excuse waiting until 2008 to finally hear them I chalk it up to that irrational suspicion I talked about yesterday. I was finally spurred to pick up Signals, Calls, and Marches, which collects their first EP and early singles, after reading about them in Michael Azzerad's Our Band Could Be Your Life. While perhaps not quite the revelation that Marquee Moon was for me, Signals was still a kind of "missing link" record, in the sense that it totally recontextualized how I heard Fugazi and a lot of other late-80s early-90s Dischord bands. Burma was clearly influenced by Gang of Four, who were a couple years ahead of them in terms of that angular, discordant sound, but they were also four, five, eight, ten years ahead of the bands who defined what punk and indie sounded like in the late 80s and early 90s.
Mission of Burma: Academy Fight Song [from Signals, Calls and Marches, 1981]
A couple weeks ago I picked up their first full-length, Vs., and was even more blown away by their sound. Though Vs doesn't contain a song as catchy as "Academy Fight Song" or "Devotion" or "That's When I Reach for My Revolver," it succeeds as a fuller, more ambitious work. Many of the songs reach a positively cinematic zenith, foreshadowing bands like Sonic Youth or Unwound. Both those bands might be a little darker, at times heavier or more experimental, but their template is there in Burma.
I don't know what hearing either Burma record back in 1994 would have altered for me; unlike Television, Burma didn't really come from a scene that took on the same mythic qualities nor begged to investigated the way the CBGB scene has. 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."
The way I see this blog, this here Pretty Goes with Pretty, is it's a constant (ideally) analysis of where my listening habits are, where they're going, why. If you like that approach, and if you're curious about where my tastes were, you might enjoy a new endeavor I've set upon: Do You Compute. Consider it a kind of pgwp time warp. You might also like the new project if you're nostalgic for (or curious about) indie rock in the 90s. As I said in my inaugural post over the weekend:
I want to revisit a time when kids discovered indie rock by chance, using a little detective work and taking risks with their wallets. The plan is to try as best as I can to put up mp3s, videos, and words about all the bands I got into when I moved out of metal and toward indie. I’m going to do my very best to tackle this in roughly chronological order—not by the albums’ release dates, but the order in which I discovered them.* I’m going to start with what I was finding around 1994 and move, eventually, toward what I was listening to at the end of the decade. Things will start out on the heavy side but you’ll see it lighten up pretty quickly, I think. There’s going to be a lot of obscure shit and a lot of not-so-obscure shit. Some of it will still be good, some of it probably won’t be. A lot of it I haven’t even listened to since the 90s, so I’m really not kidding when I say I’m “rediscovering my discovery of indie rock.”
I'm not sure, ultimately, how much I'll stick to the chronological thing—I already threw up some Labradford just for the hell of it—but at any rate I plan to dig up as much forgotten or near-forgotten music as I can think of.
Not that this blog is going anywhere. I'm just diversifying (again).
I don’t know where I got the impression that they were boringly gentle, either. It’s weird how you get these weird impressions of bands - I’ve been hearing about them for so long that I kind of accidentally built up this little cluster of impressions around them, mostly, it seems, plucked from thin air.
This is something Song By Toad said last week about Neutral Milk Hotel, whom Mr. Toad just heard for the first time. It stuck out at me because I'd just finished saying something similar about Brian Eno the day before, in that the pop of Another Green World—even the overall melodicism of the proto-ambient tracks, for that matter—was at odds with my expectations. I was prepared for minimalism. Vocals, guitar solos, even the general sense of warmth that permeates the record—all were a surprise to me. Like Mr. Toad, I'd built up a "cluster of impressions... plucked from thin air."
I said something similar about Neu!, too, who are more less new to me this year. I like Neu! more than Neu! 75 in part because, as I said last week, "I long had an impression of what Neu! was supposed to sound like, and Neu! 75 wasn't really it." (My preference for one over the other is more complex than that, but nevertheless I recognize that expectation is part of it.) In the comments to that post, Richard had a similar response:
As for Neu!—I was really surprised by them. Since, like you, Stereolab was how I got interested them, before the reissues, I expected a certain type of sound (and I was coming from the Transient Noise Bursts period of Stereolab). Only one or two of the tracks on Neu!2 have ever really met my pre-conceived notion
On one level or another, every album that has been described to you prior to your hearing it will cause some disconnect between your expectation and your actual perception. (I'd argue that any album that doesn't cause this disconnect probably doesn't stay in rotation for long.) Dear Science Comma [Comma?] has been out for less than a month, but that doesn't mean you're not developing a "cluster of impressions" about what it might sound like—ice skating to heaven, perhaps?—only to reframe your understanding of the record once you've listened to it (imho, it's more like windsurfing through purgatory). Not only might you have to reconsider what the band is "supposed" to sound like--what you thought they were supposed to sound like—but also perhaps where they fit into the musical landscape at large.
I had that kind of disconnect/reconnect experience, for example, with the Fiery Furnaces when I heard them for the first time earlier this year. I was expecting something like a second-rate Yeah Yeah Yeahs or perhaps a lo-fi Animal Collective—don't ask me why, but that's the cluster of impressions I'd built for myself—only to hear a band that is aggressively more complex, and probably the band of the day that I would laud for having a firm, considered, fresh aesthetic perspective on pop music and where it is capable of going.
It's one thing to have your cluster of impressions about a fairly new band or album dispersed upon actually hearing it. It's far more pronounced when it happens on a musical blind spot—an album or artist that is firmly part of the history of rock and roll, which you've managed to never actually hear. Like Eno, or any krautrock band, or Neutral Milk Hotel (whose album is, after all, more than a decade old now). To go ten years or more with an impression of a band, only to have it dissolve within thirty seconds of hearing the first track—it can be a dramatic musical epiphany, causing you not only to rethink the artist in question, but also all of the artists that came after. Just think: you thought Jeff Mangum was a twee, Sarah Records–loving sadboy lamenting the tear in his sweater; then you hear "The King of Carrot Flowers," with its morbidly surreal/surreally morbid imagery. You thought Eno was droning synths and blurbs and bleeps, then you hear the jagged guitar, fluid bass, and harmonizing refrains of "Sky Saw"; You thought Neu! was supposed to be the uber-definition of "motorik"—one steady drumbeat, no fills, rigid as a factory assembly line—only to hear the light-as-air ambiance of "Isi" or "Seeland."
Mr. Toad talked about how, after listening to NMH, bands like the Decemberists or Beirut suddenly existed in a new context. It's acutally the perfect illustration of what I'm talking about. You listen to either of those bands and everyone tells you that they owe a debt to Jeff Mangum. So you build up an impression of NMH that their lyrics must have a literary edge to them; that Mangum's voice probably occupies a certain range, and maybe he carries on a little while he sings; that maybe there's an accordian or some kind of world music influence. All of those things are somewhat true. But the reality is whatever the Decemberists or Beirut are lifting from Mangum, it's not the essence of Neutral Milk Hotel. Personally, I'd argue that those acts are barely skimming the surface of the waters NMH treads in, to the extent that it's almost offensive to align the groups. Neither is as intimately connected, on a kind of personal level I can barely understand, to their lyrics or imagery. Neither has sewn together a single album into the kind of tapestry that In the Aeroplane over the Sea is. Neither has made a record that congeals its historical, personal, and musical components into a perfect whole.
At the same time, I saw a documentary on Syd Barrett a few months ago, and hearing snippets from his post-Pink Floyd material—which I've never heard in full—opened at least a small window for me; namely that Mangum owes his own debts. To what extent, I don't yet know. (Wait 'til I buy more Barrett and I'll pick that thread up). The thing that jumped out at me was a similarity in their vocal delivery--a kind of wailing moan--over simple acoustic guitar. That may well be the extent of what Mangum lifts, leaving the rest of Barrett's distinct style and personality to Barrett. Just as the Decemberists barely lift anything worthwhile from Neutral Milk Hotel. Just as Stereolab didn't so much as rip off Neu! as riff on one or two specific Neu! songs. Just as the many musicians who credit Eno as an influence are not really thinking of "I'll Come Running" when they say so.
I'm sure I could think of others. What about you? Any albums (new or old) you finally heard that sounded completely unlike what you'd built them up to be in your mind?
