Pretty Goes with Pretty

2011: Blind Spots

Among the 62 albums I acquired in 2011, many were old albums I'm only now catching up on. Some stuck with me better than others. Here are my (unranked) favorite new-to-me albums of the year.

Harmonia: Musik von Harmonia and Cluster: Zuckerzeit
2011 was kind of a Clustery year for me. I acquired Zuckerzeit as well as an earlier Kluster album (terrible), two solo albums from Hans Joachim Roedelius (both not bad), and Harmonia's debut (Harmonia is Cluster + Neu's Michael Rother). Of them all, Musik von Harmonia and Zuckerzeit are far and away the best. Musik von Harmonia starts with the excellent "Watussi"—one of the group's best tracks and perhaps the clearest krautrock progenitor to modern techno outside of Kraftwerk. Overall that record is a seamless integration of the sounds of the two groups its members hailed from—"Sonneschein" and "Dino" contain the steady, train-like rhythms of Neu! while much of the rest of the record is immersed in the more meditative electronics Roedelius and Dieter Moebius traffic in with their main gig. Zuckerzeit was released the same year as Musik von Harmonia (1974), and I guess it shows: I bought both records on the same day and have found myself playing them back to back ever since.

• Harmonia: Watussi
• Cluster: Caramba

Talk Talk: Laughing Stock
Talk Talk's last two albums (this, and before it, Spirit of Eden) are so perfectly realized that it's hard for me to find a way of even articulating what's so great about them. Both were reissued this year, along with Mark Hollis's one and only solo album (at the top of my to-buy list right now). I like Spirit of Eden just a hair more, but I think it has more to do with hearing it first—the two albums are of a piece. Both are spacious, emotive, tightly wound yet sounding loose and easy at the same time. No single song excels apart from the records as wholes—they are just ripples in a larger, perfectly evocative sea of music.

• Talk Talk: Ascension Day

Harry Belafonte: Calypso
In sharp contrast to all the moody ambient I listened to this year, one of my very favorite acquisitions of 2011 was Harry Belafonte's debut album from 1956. "Day-O" is the recognizable hit, and perhaps therefore the least compelling song on the record due to its oversaturation of the last 65 years. It's really all about the rest of the record—folky numbers that, for the most part, lack the boisterousnous you might associate with Belafonte due to a song like "Jump in the Line" (not on this album). The songs are all jams, in any case, including the ones that have a socially conscious undertone. I return to this album over and over, the same way I do my Les Paul or Doris Day greatest hits, Elis & Tom, or anything by Harry Nilsson—not because it shares anything specific in common with those albums, but because it is a pure joy to listen to.

• Harry Belafonte: Dolly Dawn

Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa: Domingo
Recorded before the tropicalia movement really took off, Domingo is a straightforward bossa nova album much more in line with Antonio Carlos Jobim and Elis Regina's Elis & Tom than with the more adventurous material Veloso and Costa would tackle just a year or so later. I give you that preamble so I can follow up with this: who cares? Domingo is a lovely album, perfect for quiet evenings and early mornings. No single song rises above or falls below the others—it's a consistently pleasurable 30 minutes of wonderful bossa nova.

• Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa: Coracão Vagabundo

Dillard & Clark: Through the Morning, Through the Night
A couple of years ago I picked up Dillard & Clark's 1968 debut, The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark, and it has stood up as one of my favorite albums ever since. Their one and only follow-up is quite good, though perhaps not quite as good as the first. The band feels less focused—maybe it's all the covers, or the addition of Doug Dillard's girlfriend, Donna Washburn, who takes lead vocals on a fine cover of "Rocky Top." Regardless, Gene Clark's songcraft, overlaid by Dillard's bluegrass wizardry, shines through.

• Dillard & Clark: Through the Morning, Through the Night

Brian Eno: Ambient 1: Music for Airports
After finally getting into Brian Eno a few years ago and realizing I'd discovered an artist who I knew would have rewarding record after rewarding record, I made the decision to take it slow going deeper into his discography (and to try, more or less, to take it chronologically). Thus I've spent the last few years digging on his earlier rock albums (for what it's worth: Here Come the Warm Jets > Another Green World > Before and After Science >> Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy). Just this month I finally bought my first ambient Eno album. Guess what: it's awesome. One more thing: I'm such an idiot for waiting until my 30s to get into Brian Eno.

• Brian Eno: 2/1

Cat Stevens: Tea for the Tillerman
I wrestled with whether or not to count this as "new to me," since much of it was already familiar. Oh well—it's a great record. I talked more about it here.

• Cat Stevens: Into White

My Listening Hours: October

After a dry summer, my acquisitive streak seems to have returned, both for old and new records. Here's a rundown, in the order I picked things up.

Motion Sickness of Time Travel: Luminaries & Syntastry
This has been a fantastic year for the ambient/nü-kosmiche genre—I count albums by Tim Hecker, Rene Hell, and Mountains all among my favorites of 2011 so far. That means the bar is pretty high for the genre right now. Which is bad news for Motion Sickness of Time Travel (aka Rachel Evans). I find Luminaries & Synatry to be a fine record—good for writing or reading and the like—but it rarely grips me as a work of art, as the best of the year often do.

• Motion Sickness of Time Travel: Synastry

Roedelius: Durch die Wüste and Selbsportrait I
Hearing the Roedelius Schneider track last month reminded me that my journey through the old Harmonia/Cluster universe is far from over. Among other albums long on my to-buy list have been some of Roedelius' early solo albums. Through some degree of happenstance, these are the two I picked up. (Did I miss a better option? Please advise!) Durch die Wüste, his first solo release, starts with an unexpected (and not terrific) rock vamp before the rest of the record settles into the more identifiable relaxed synths-and-piano compositions. Between the two albums I picked up, I prefer Selbsportrait I, his third solo album and first in his acclaimed Selbsportrait series. It feels a little closer to the sounds of Cluster, though with fewer beats. (Actually, it reminds me more of Raymond Scott than Cluster—which is sort of what Cluster would sound like if they didn't have any beats. So, go figure.)

• Roedelius: Johanneslust (from Durch die Wüste)
• Roedelius: Herold (from Selbsportrait I)

Mates of State: Mountaintops
I predicted I would stop listening to this soon after buying it, and I was right. Though that doesn't mean it's a bad album. Review.

• Mates of State: Unless I'm Led

Feist: Metals
Her best album. Review.

• Feist: The Circle Married the Line

Joe Byrd & The Field Hippies: The American Metaphysical Circus
After a track by the United States of America came up on shuffle earlier this month, I went on a "whatever happened to" Google search and ran across this, USA leader Joe Byrd's return following the original band's break up. It's clearly meant as a sequel of sorts, given that the album title is identical to the opening track on the USA's one and only album. No other USA members appear among the dozen or so Field Hippies, a cast of L.A.-based musicians and singers, but Byrd is clearly going for the same sound—an eclectic mix of psychedliea and avant electronics, with equal doses humor and haze. Unfortunately the album just comes off as second rate. As similar as it is, it just falls flat compared to USA's spark. It's not a bad album, but it's just okay—and a disappointment compared to Byrd's earlier masterpiece.

• Joe Byrd & The Field Hippies: You Can't Ever Come Down

Favorite Downloads: September

Putting together these monthly mixes has become one of my favorite things to do on Pretty Goes with Pretty. It's not like putting together a typical mix, which usually has some unifying theme. No, these are mixes made with strict rules:

1. all the songs were downloaded within the last month
2. all are new to me, and it should go without saying that I think they're all great
3. the mix is intended to be listened to straight through and should be a satisfying experience
4. (The fourth, til-now-unspoken rule is that each month's mix must also flow from last month's mix, because I keep a single mega-playlist of the year's mixes on my iTunes)

This sounds simple but in many months can be quite challenging. First, I'm letting my tastes dictate what must be included in the mix—whether it's country, soul, ambient, indie, whatever. Then I need to figure out how to make that all run in a way that seems natural. This month was probably the most challenging all year. I must have listened to these ten songs in varying orders for the last two weeks, before finally settling on this one tonight. It's probably not my most elegant mix, but I do like some of the weird juxtapositions, especially hearing the sound of the keyboard in Roedelius Schneider's "Single Boogie" echoed by the sound of the Equals' guitars).

Anyway, have at it: press play on song #1 and just let the rest go. Hope you enjoy. If you want to hear the other mixes I've done this year, click here and scroll through the various "Favorite Downloads" mixes.

• Gene Clark: The American Dreamer [via The Rising Storm]
• No UFO's: Less Or Maybe Even... [via 20 Jazz Funk Greats]
• Roedelius Schneider: Single Boogie [via Altered Zones]
• The Equals: Diversion [via The Adios Lounge]
• The Field: Then It's White [via Pop Headwound]
• Joy Lovejoy: In Orbit [via For the Sake of the Song]
• Lloyd & Glen: That Girl [via Aquarium Drunkard]
• Oneohtrix Point Never: Sleep Dealer [via Altered Zones]
• Atlas Sound: Te Amo [via You Ain't No Picasso]
• Dion: Now [via The Rising Storm]

My Listening Hours: August

August was another month of doldrums, listening-wise, much like June. Despite not really enjoying the one album I got this month—in fact I think I only listened to it once!—my lack of new acquisitions hasn't spun me into any sort of malaise. Actually, I feel like I listened to a lot of music this month—just not new-to-me albums. Rather, I spent a lot of time with instrumental and ambient records while writing and doing some freelance work, and going back to some old favorites/musical comfort food in the mornings and evenings. I've also managed to stay on top of some of my favorite music blogs, downloading more stray mp3s this month than any other so far in 2011. Also, I'm learning the pleasures of Spotify, which lessens the need to import every album I want to hear into my hard drive.

Kluster: Zwei-Osterei
On the news that Conrad Schnitzler had passed away earlier this month (great obituary by Geeta Dayal, by the way), I was reminded that I had yet to check out any Kluster-with-a-K—i.e., the period in the early 1970s when Schnitzler was part of the group with Roedelius and Moebius (without him, they switched to Cluster-with-a-C; and now, apparentyl Roedelius has a new outfit sans Moebius, Qluster-with-a-Q!). I've learned, via the earliest records by Kraftwerk, Klause Shulze, Ash Ra Tempel, and Tangerine Dream, that the primordial krautrock albums are generally not really my thing. They tend to be exceptionally long improvisations with only sparks of inspiration here and there, and are otherwise ominous/brooding/aimless/noisy/meandering space-outs that might've been fun to experience live, or are sometimes worth listening to straight through once or twice. Ultimately however most of these albums are worth hearing for the sake of understanding the context in which the larger genre existed and evolved from, but not really for pure pleasure. Zwei-Osterei falls into that category, and actually ranks among the worst of those early krautrock albums. The spoken word on the opening track, even though I can't understand a word of it, feels dumb. As for the music, nothing here gives the sense that Soweisoso or Zuckerzeit (or Con) are in these guys' future.

The Soft Synth, Softly Synthesizing

Andy Beta’s recent article for the Los Angeles Times, “A New Age for New Age Music,”  starts off as a trend piece—New Age is back! It’s cool!—identifying Animal Collective’s sampling of Zamphir, Jimmy Tamborello’s remixes of Enya, Beck’s cover of Yanni’s Live at the Acropolis, and other examples as a sign that the maligned genre is being rehabilitated. Clearly there’s truth to that (ironic or otherwise), but by the article’s midpoint Beta also exposes just how messy concepts like genre or influence can be.

[T]he tag New Age is rather broad. It encompasses the electronic soundscapes of Michael Stearns and Steve Roach as well as the gentle acoustic albums that Windham Hill made ubiquitous. It has roots in American composers like Terry Riley as well as Indian classical music. New Age founding fathers Paul Horn and Steven Halpern come from the 1960s jazz tradition, and yet it also contains Native American and Sanskrit chants. It's also influenced by the series of ambient albums made by Eno in the mid-'70s as well as the adventurous German music of Klaus Schulze, Manuel Göttsching, Deuter and Vangelis, not to mention the synth pop made in Japan by Kitaro. And then there were the California communes that gave rise to artists like Peter Davison and Iasos.

In this paragraph alone Beta has cited a dozen different New Age roots, each of which has branched into a myriad different subgenres which may or may not have anything in common with each other. It’s a fool’s errand to try and pin down all the ways in which this once-cheesy genre has wormed its way into contemporary music—as I learned when I attempted to do the same with soft rock, also enjoying a parallel resurgence in 2011 (though I use the term “enjoying” loosely).

That post on soft rock generated a fair amount of response, much of it taking me to task for presuming the artists’ motivations or just being kinda pissed that I hate the new Destroyer record. The thing that disappointed me about that response was that I realized, in retrospect, that I had framed my opinions as a "problem with music"—like, it was the musicians who were failing me. In truth I was more concerned, as I always am on this blog, with my own tastes and peccadillos. I was trying to identify the line between so-called soft acts who I really liked (Feist, Fleet Foxes, Midlake, etc.) and those I really loathed (Destroyer’s Kaputt, Gayngs, and now add the Weeknd too). Clearly there is a line—since that post the term “PBR&B” has become a thing, and those bands I loathe fall into that category while those I like do not, and yet all of these acts have something soft or hokey in their music. Different reference points, but soft in any case.

That’s where Beta’s paragraph, quoted above, resonates. He’s talking about a parallel trend happening in on the electronic side of music right now, citing acts like Gang Gang Dance, Emeralds, and Blues Control, and he quotes, among others, members of Animal Collective and Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never/Ford & Lopatin. All of these acts are drawing from disparate roots—krautrock, jazz, Eno, synth pop, etc.—but are, according to Beta, winding up somewhere approximating New Age (Nu-Age? Neu Age?).

 

There’s a lot to unpack in all of this, not least is what constitutes New Age in the first place and whether or not an act like Emeralds is remotely close to that definition (I’m not sure they are). They are clearly influenced by Klaus Schulze, but then again Schulze has released 60+ albums over more than forty years, some of which are drone, some are trance, some could be considered New Age, and so on. Looking solely at krautrock for a minute, as a genre it enjoyed at least a decade (roughly 1969–1979) of wild experimentation and improvisation before many of its most esteemed practitioners either slowed their output or evolved into something more peaceful and serene (and cheesy). Tangerine Dream, Michael Rother, and others released some serious dreck in the 80s, and those are the albums where the genre known as krautrock (kosmiche!) begins to be identified with New Age. Ambient music, too, started from a place of extreme minimalism and ideas formulated by the likes of Alvin Lucier or John Cage, among others. But in time melody and structure—and synthesizers—crept into the genre and thus an entire strain of that style also fell into the New Age ghetto.

I don’t think Emeralds or Gang Gang Dance or Lopatin or some of the others referenced in Beta’s article have taken up with New Age in such an extreme fashion—I mean, I hardly want to get out my crystals and celebrate the solstice when I listen to Returnal. But Beta does point to a similar arc happening within these artists’ own evolution, noting that the group Blues Control was originally interested in noise but lost interest in that form, so they “started exploring different types of psychedelic music like New Age.” A year or two back I read an interview with Lopatin where he said essentially the same thing—that he came from noise but pivoted to ambient (or whatever you want to call his genre) because he was looking for something more challenging to his sensibilities. There is still clearly an edge to his Returnal album (it starts with a noise track, after all), and it would be difficult to confuse any of these acts with Yanni, but if we’re looking at the trajectory of noise artists, then yeah, they’ve gone pretty soft.

 

Whether you think this trend is worrisome or not probably depends on your own musical allergies. I, for instance, am clearly allergic to the saxophone, as my soft rock post and any number of tweets and other stray comments might make clear. But I’m not allergic to that retro synth sound that seems to be creeping into a lot of ambient/nu-kosmiche acts. Just give a listen the Steve Moore track (from 2007) or the Harald Grosskopf track (from 1980) I included in the mix I posted on Monday, or the synth-heavy tracks on the new Mountains album which I’ve named one of my favorites of the year so far. And yet I could fully appreciate someone wanting to turn these tracks off within fifteen seconds, so painful to the ears they might sound if one has nasty musical memories of the last time this synth sound was in vogue.

And even that’s not to say one’s enjoyment of a song begins and ends with the instruments being played, or their exact tone. All of these acts still have it in their power to create or destroy a pleasurable listening experience. This whole idea of tying an assortment of acts to one (awful) retro genre misses the mark—an argument I realize can and should be levied against my soft rock stance. As Bruce Levenstein, who has a great blog called Rockets and Rayguns and tweets as @compactrobot, said yesterday:  “No, there’s a stigma attached to New Age music because a lot of it is/was incredibly shitty. Those New Age textures didn’t ‘signal’ something cheesy, they were cheesy. And Mr. Lopatin finding it 'amusing' doesn’t make it any better.”

 

This all loops back around to those concepts of genre and influence, of presuming an artist's motivations, and ultimately of how much stock you can put in identifying trends or viewing a trend's trajectory as a personal affront. As a fan of a certain genre, or of specific musicians, it can feel like a betrayal when the music heads down a path you don't want to go down. Of course that's not the musician's fault; what's really happening is you're seeing a schism between larger musical trends and your own listening trends--two totally different things. A couple years back I wrote a post called "Do I Want to Go There?", in which I tried to take a step back from my infatuation with music from Laurel Canyon to see where I'd wind up if I chose to go in deep with the genre. The answer was no. Frankly, whatever the genre, the answer is almost always no! If you go in deep with krautrock you wind up with a ton of shitty Tangerine Dream albums; if you go in deep with Laurel Canyon you wind up with the Eagles; if you go in deep the current nu-kosmiche, retro-synth trend, you're probably going to wind up with some hokey Enya-referencing ironic spiritualist; if you like PBR&B, god help you, you're already too far gone.

The experience of music is, at all times, a play on the tension between the evolution of an artist's creative arc and that of a listener's personal  tastes. They mesh or clash every time you press play, leading at the best of times to epiphany, at the worst of times to a sense of betrayal. It's a relationship; both parties are free to make it work or screw it up.

 

My Listening Hours: May

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.

• Okkervil River: The Valley

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.

• Fleet Foxes: Blue Spotted Tail

Cass McCombs: Wit's End
One glorious track followed by seven oppressively dull slogs. Review.

• Cass McCombs: County Line 

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.

• My Morning Jacket: The Day is Coming

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.

• Wild Beasts: Lion's Share

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.

• Talk Talk: Ascension Day

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.

• Mountains: Sequel

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.

• Peter Bjorn & John: I Know You Don't Love Me

My Listening Hours: April

A little bit late, but here's a quick rundown of every new-to-me album I picked up in April, in the order I acquired them.

Low: Drums and Guns
Continuing the rehabilitation of my opinion of Low's output of the last ten years, I've come to the realization that, in fact, the band has never made a bad album. My bad for ever assuming that they had. Unfortunately when Drums and Guns originally came out the only songs I heard from it were "Pretty People," "Breaker," and "Hatchet"; I didn't particularly like the first and third of those tracks, and the video for the second kinda annoyed me. Since I'd already (mistakenly!) written them off after The Great Destroyer, it was easy to pass this over. Forgive me for my errors! Though it's not my favorite album by Low, it's still quite good, and it stands apart from the rest of their output for its anger and dread. It's final third in particular is really magical.

 

Rene Hell: The Terminal Symphony
Hell is another entrant in the quickly filling "nu-kosmiche" genre of Krautrock-influenced synth/ambient (see also Oneohtrixpoint Never, Emeralds, and Arp, among others). The Terminal Symphony is Hell's second full length and is quite good. Like Arp's The Soft Wave (my favorite album of last year), it does a good job of mixing textures, melodies, and dynamics, making something that is easy to get lost in but providing enough hooks to climb your way out.

• Rene Hell: Lighthouse Marvel

Cluster: Zuckerzeit
Harmonia: Musik von Harmonia
Speaking of, here are the two biggest culprits inspiring the wave of acts like Rene Hell et al. I own and love other albums by both of these groups (well, technically it's the same group in both cases—Harmonia is just Cluster+Michael Rother), and have been meaning to get these albums for at least a year. After watching the excellent BBC documentary about Krautrock, I was inspired to download both posthaste. I've been listening to both ever since, often one after the other, to the point that I don't totally know where one ends and the other begins. They're both excellent.

• Cluster: Caramba
• Harmonia: Sonnenschein

Caetano Veloso & Gal Costa: Domingo
I had no idea this record even existed until I happened across a link to it earlier this month. Apparently the album was made prior to either Veloso or Costa's solo debuts; it's basically a samba record not too far off from the sound of, say, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Elis Regina's Tom & Elis (one of my favorite records of all time). This isn't as good as that, but then again that's a pretty high bar. This is still quite nice.

• Caetano Veloso & Gal Costa: Coração Vagabundo

Low: C'mon
I promise everything I said about Low above is true, but nevertheless—like I said yesterday—C'mon is their best album in ten years, and is so far in the running for my favorite album of the year.

 

Music Diary: Thursday

7:45 am: My wife plays a YouTube clip of Joni Mitchell performing "California."

   

8:45 am: On a damp and overcast morning, I put on Rene Hell's The Terminal Symphony again, this time on headphones. I give up after a few tracks because it can't compete with the noise of traffic while I wait for the bus. I switch to the "We've All Got Wheels" playlist I mentioned on Monday. I make it through most of the playlist on my commute, which takes about 40 minutes—30 of which are spent standing around waiting for the bus.

• International Submarine Band: I Must Have Been Somebody Else You've Known

9:30 am: In my office, I finish out the playlist and my iPod glides right into the stuff I was listening to the night before—the Sea and Cake (same old same old from them), Gang Gang Dance (not as good as the other song they've released from their new album), Phil Ochs. Then it's a few Merle Haggard songs, so from Monday—though I feel like I'm hearing them for the first time today.

• Merle Haggard: The Girl Turned Ripe

10:08 am: Needing instrumental music so I can focus on an editing project, I return again to Rene Hell. When it's over I switch over to my "Writing" playlist and shuffle through more instrumental tracks by the Dirty Three, Isan, Oval, Papa M, Four Tet, Tied & Tickled Trio, the Books, Arvo Pärt, Belong, and Philip Glass. Eventually I take my headphones out and don't return to any music for the rest of the work day.

• Philip Glass: Escape! (from The Hours Solo Piano)

6:08 pm: My wife has a quick dinner ready for us—this is like two hours earlier than usual!—since once again she has to work tonight. While we're eating I feel the urge to listen to the two Michael Nesmith songs we have in the library—"Roll with the Flow" and "Some of Shelly's Blues." It's the latter that I was compelled to hear, ever since hearing an inferior version by the Stone Ponys in the "Wheels" playlist in my morning commute. When those two songs are over I skip ahead in the library to Midlake's first album, Bamnan and Silvercork. It's such a great and underrated album—underrated maybe because it lacks the 70s-isms that made so many people love The Trials of Van Occupanther (itself a genius album). This becomes the soundtrack to Coop's bedtime ritual, which is code for "I didn't really pay attention to any of this because I was giving my kid a bath and reading him a story and putting him to sleep."

• Michael Nesmith: Some Of Shelly's Blues
• Midlake: Kingfish Pies

8:07 pm: After an hour of silence I put on the Amarillo Highway playlist, also from Monday. I realize that I much prefer the Wheels playlist to this one.

9:15 pm: I've had the BBC4 Krautrock documentary from a few years back bookmarked on my browser for months and months, but I never remember to watch it when I'm home alone. Tonight I finally remember and it is awesome (though I watched it on YouTube and the final segment's audio is unfortunately totally bungled). Snippets of Amon Düül II, Popol Vuh, Can, Kraftwerk, Neu!, Faust, Harmonia, and Cluster. It's awesome.

10:28 pm: Cluster's Zuckerzeit followed by the first part of Harmonia's Musik von Harmonia, both downloaded within moments of finishing the doc—and both albums I'd been meaning to get for a while now. I can't actually make it through the whole Harmonia album—dad's gotta go to bed so he's not a zombie in the morning.

• Cluster: Caramba

My Listening Hours: March

After spending January and February trying really hard to keep up with all the new releases and the surrounding conversation, I apparently rejected that approach in March, with exactly zero 2011 releases acquired this month. It's actually been a nice palate cleanser, for the most part. Here's a recap of what I picked up, in chronological order. Next week I'll have a quarterly roundup highlighting, specifically, my favorite acquisitions (new and old) of the last three months.

Harry Belafonte: Calypso
Possibly my favorite acquisition of the year so far. This is one of those records, like Les Paul & Mary Ford's Best of the Capitol Masters or Doris Day's greatest hits or Sam Cooke's greatest hits, that will likely be in perpetual play around the house. What I possibly like most about it is that it's not as raucous as you might think it is, assuming like me you only know "Day-O" or "Jump in the Line." Most the songs here are quite stripped down and lovely—sometimes heartbreaking.

• Harry Belafonte: Jamaica Farewell

Crosby, Stills & Nash: s/t
After years of getting in deep with the Byrds, I figured it was finally time for me to give CSN an honest chance and listen to one of their records all the way through. Well, the opinions I'd previously held based on their hits remains unchanged. For the most part CSN is just too pristine. I am an avowed fan of great harmonies but CSN for whatever reason leaves me cold. They're all harmony, no heart. I do really like "Lady of the Island," though. Other than that, I'm ambivalent to this record.

• Crosby, Stills & Nash: Lady of the Island

Fugiya & Miyagi: Lightbulbs
"Knickerbocker Glory" was one of my favorite songs of 2008, though I never got around to picking up the album from which it came. Three years later I came across it on a whim and brought it home. "Knickerbocker" kicks things off and frankly the rest of the record, though following the same basic formula, is rarely as good as that song. A few songs get close—"Uh," "Pickpocket," "Pussyfooting"—but for the most part Lightbulbs is a pleasant if not exhilerating lazy disco album for stoners. There are worse things to be than lazy disco for stoners, of course.

• Fugiya & Miyagi: Pussyfooting

Can: Unlimited Edition
This is a b-sides and outtakes collection that spans 1968 to 1975 and includes material from various lineup iterations of the band. It is almost totally worthless. Most of the nineteen tracks are aimless and kinda stupid. Some are fine but not special, and a small number rise to above average.

• Can: The Empress and the Ukraine King

Low: The Great Destroyer
I feel like a fool. Low, can you ever forgive me for writing off The Great Destroyer based on a couple of listening station samples and a stray mp3 all those years ago? I should have had more faith in you, shouldn't have trusted the middling-to-poor reviews. Who were those reviewers, anyway? I didn't know them—not like I knew you. And yet I let six years go by before I listened to The Great Destroyer all the way through. Low, will you take me back? It's is not a perfect album, but it is a fulfilling album. Where it felt disappointing back in 2005, now it feels refreshing. The great strength of Low is that, even within the confines of their overall aesthetic, they always find ways to push their own envelope. Trust didn't push too hard, while The Great Destroyer pushes harder than anything they'd done before. With this album, Low are clearly trying to break their own mold. Whether you want that mold broken or not will dictate how you feel about the record.

• Low: Silver Rider

Deutsche Wertarbeit: s/t
Over at ILM there is a "Krautrock Listening Klub" thread that has supplied me with inumerable new-to-me jams. The thread went dormant a few months ago but was recently revived, starting with Deutsche Wertarbeit's self-titled debut and Earthstar's French Skyline. I've never heard of either of these groups before, despite my love of the genre. Both of these albums are great, the Deutsche Wertarbeit record in particular. It falls on the more electronic side of krautrock—think Cluster or Harmonia—though comes a little late in the game, 1981. A lot of krautrock acts segued from pioneering electronica in the 70s to cheesy new age in the 80s. Deutsche Waterbeit is a good milemarker on that trajectory. The music is clearly indebted to Cluster or Harmonia's—"Deutsher Wald" feels ripped from Deluxe—but it's also made on synthesizers that sound like harbingers of Tangerine Dream's awful mid-80s work. (Confession: I also acquired Tangerine Dream's Le Parc this month but deleted it from my hard drive after two listens. Dreck.) It's a strange pivot point in the evolution of some krautrock bands, where the aesthetic sensibility is still at a high level but the technology is evolving into something that, to these ears at least, is a bit silly. Don't take that comment too much to heart, however: I really like this album. It's one of my favorite acquisitions of the month, especially for the gorgeously sedate closer, "Der Grosse Atem."

• Deutsche Waterbeit: Der Grosse Atem

Earthstar: French Skyline
I've spent less time with this album but it too is pretty great. Interstingly Earthstar is actually an Americna band, from Utica, New York, who were so enamoured with the music happening in Germany at the time that they moved there. Recorded by none other than Klause Schulze, French Skyline was Earthstar's second album, and first to be released on the German label Sky records (home of Cluster, Michael Rother, and others). It's some epic drone with occasional guitar solos. Actually it feels like a precursor to what Emeralds are doing thirty years later. 

• Earthstar: Latin Sirens Face The Wall Part III The Flourishing Illusion

Favorite Downloads: February

And now a playlist of my favorite random new-to-me tracks I downloaded in the last month. Most are from new releases or yet-to-be-released albums, with a couple classics tossed in for good measure. Shout out to the Cargo Culte for hipping me to three of these tracks (Fugiya & Miyagi, Hawkwind, and Spacemen 3). Also, the Atlas Sound track came from a great mix by Kenny Bloggins at the Decibel Tolls. (I've been remiss on checking out much Atlas Sound due to being only lukewarm on Deerhunter, but "Quick Canal" has me reassessing that omission.) The rest came either from a zillion other blogs or via Altered Zones.

Unlike yesterday's sampling, this playlist was assembled with the intention of working like a playlist, so I encourage you to press play on the first track and let it cycle through. You can hear the January mix here.

• Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues (2011)
• Panda Bear: Last Night At The Jetty (2011)
• Hans-Joachim Roedelius: Staunen im Fjord (1979)
• Fujiya & Miyagi: Ventriloquizzing (2011)
• Atlas Sound (w/ Laetitia Sadier): Quick Canal (2009)
• Hawkwind: Web Weaver (1974)
• Spacemen 3: Take Me to the Other Side (1987)
• White Rainbow: Captain Sandwich Patrol (2011)
• Low: Try to Sleep (2011)

The King of Can

I started to listen to The King of Limbs for the first time this morning but ran into some technical difficulties with the opening track, so I abandoned it and put on Tago Mago instead. I wasn't really paying attention, and then for a second during the opening track, "Papermoon," I thought "wow, this new Radiohead album is amazing!" Only for a second, but still: get to the two-minute mark of "Papermoon" and listen to those shuffling drums! Genius, and not unlike beats I've heard Phil Selway knock out. Plus, that guitar tone—it's actually not too far off from something Johnny Greenwood would use! And then the whispery vocals come in—wouldn't be the first time Thom Yorke obscured himself. Beyond that, okay, I admit: only a total idiot could mistake one for the other. But for just one second...

• Can: Paperhouse
  

My Listening Hours: January

I'm trying something new with these My Listening Hours posts in 2011: rather than a week of posts every three months—far too daunting to compose anymore—I'll trot out a much more abbreviated monthly post. Ideally I'll have written at length about most of these records already. At the three month mark I may still do a quarterly report of some sort... who knows.

I've ordered these by when I acquired them. This "month" actually stretches back to about mid-December—everything I've acquired since doing my year-end wrap-up. Without further ado...

Sam Prekop: Old Punch Card (2010)
An interesting excercise but not really a fulfilling listen. Review.

• Sam Prekop: Old Punch Card

Third Eye Foundation: The Dark (2010)
Singling out one track from this record does not do The Dark justice. It succeeds best as a whole work, listened to from beginning to end. Probably my favorite album of this month's bunch. Review.

• Third Eye Foundation: Anhedonia

Actress: Splazsh (2010)
There's probably a name for whatever genre Actress is working in—microhouse? dubstep?—but I don't keep up well enough with all the varieties of electronica to know for sure. At any rate Splazsh is a mostly great album that rewards multiple listens. Review.

• Actress: Maze

Kraftwerk: Autobahn (1974)
Despite my love of all things krautrock, Kraftwerk has been a longtime blind spot for me. Last year I started at the very beginning, picking up their four earliest records, most of which were spacey and aimless and featuring more organic instrumentation and composition. This is my first real taste of the Kraftwerk everyone means when they talk about Kraftwerk. The title track is, as anyone would tell you, spectacular. The rest is merely okay by comparison (it is, after all, hard to compare). Funny to me, though, that this gets as much praise as it does when other groups were making music as good (or better) than this at the same time. Fr'instance, Harmonia.

• Kraftwerk: Kometenmelodie 2

Brian Eno: Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (1974)
I've been slowly and steadily picking up various Brian Eno albums ever since finally getting around to Another Green World a couple of years go. I've begun with his early, pop-oriented albums, this being the last one I've come across. It's not as perfect as Here Come the Warm Jets, nor as bouncy as Before and After Science, nor as ambitious as Another Green World—but it's still pretty good. I'm eager to start moving into Eno's ambient albums. Suggestions on where exactly to start are welcome.

• Brian Eno: The Fat Lady Of Limbourg
  

Disappears: Lux (2010)
Tim Hecker: An Imaginary Country (2009)
Belong: October Language (2004)
As I perused Pitchfork's list of upcoming releases in 2011 (which I detailed here), one word kept jumping out at me: Kranky. Feeling a little drained on rock music, I felt a renewed attraction to the label that treated me to so many great albums years back when I did a better job of keeping up with ambient and space rock. All three of these acts have albums coming up any time now. Since I didn't know their stuff, I went back and sought out earlier releases from each. Well, turns out Disappears isn't space rock so much as a fairly noisy psychedelic act—which is fine! Actually I think Lux is a pretty good album—good enough for me to want to hear the next Disappears album. The Tim Hecker album, of these three, is the highlight. It's a really beautiful ambient album. I do have a couple of other tracks by him and I feel convinced now that I am a convert who will follow him for a long time. The Belong album is also quite nice—washes of distortion that feel more peaceful than noisy.

• Disappears: Marigold
• Tim Hecker: Borderlands
• Belong: I Never Lose, Never Really

Destroyer: Kaputt (2011)
I seem to be the only person on the internet who thinks this is a mostly terrible album. It has its redeeming qualities—the lyrics, for one—but I just can't stomach the soft rock genre Dan Bejar has chosen to take on. More about this record, and the soft rock trend, to come tomorrow. Anyway, here's one of the good songs.

• Destroyer: Poor In Love

Tennis: Cape Dory (2011)
A great story and a nice aesthetic but it only rises near greatness in spots. Not a bad record, but I think they need to become more assured songwriters. Review.

• Tennis: Seafarer
  

The Radio Dept.: Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002–2010 (2011)
There's still at least another disc's worth of miscellaneous Radio Dept. tracks that could be collected, and I'd happily pick that up too. Review.

• The Radio Dept.: You And Me Then

Iron & Wine: Kiss Each Other Clean (2011)
I made the mistake of playing my brilliant wife this album's worst track, "Big Burned Hand," before she heard anything else. Now Kiss Each Other Clean is dead to her. I would entreat her to give it another chance were it not for my own mixed feelings. There are some great songs here, such as "Godless Brother in Love," but it's also accurate to say this is Iron & Wine's worst album. I'll have a fuller review in a few days.

• Iron & Wine: Godless Brother In Love
  

Blind Spots of 2010

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.

• Harry Nilsson: Ten Little Indians
• Cluster: Sowiesoso
• Harmonia: Gollum
• Manuel Göttsching: Quasarsphere
• Talk Talk: Desire
• Tangerine Dream: Ultima Thule pt. 1
• Kraftwerk: Tanzmusik
• Brian Eno: Some Of Them Are Old

Buried Vocals

Ever since I wrote it, I've been thinking about the way I framed my recent Walkmen post:

Compelling frontmen with strong voices and a grasp of emotional and lyrical nuance are a rare breed in indie rock, a genre that has typically favored effacing the lead vocal through reverb, distortion, a low mix, nonsensical lyrics, or an enigmatic personality for the better part of twenty-five or thirty years.

This line of thought has stuck in my craw for a few reasons, none of which relate to the Walkmen. First, I grant that it's too broad a statement. There are plenty of dynamic and compelling singers in indie rock. Nevertheless indie—I'm using this term as an umbrella for a lot of sub-genres—seems to have more than its share of bands who use an obscured or effaced vocal as part of its aesthetic. (It's also more than indie: contemporary hip hop has been big on obscuring vocals via vocoder for a few years now.)

But as common as it is—as pervasive as it is—I don't find many people thinking of obscured vocals as an aesthetic that has been passed down through decades of music (beyond referencing shoegaze and leaving it at that). Compare to the way critics might analyze, say, harmony—an utterly fundamental element of songwriting, yet something that can be placed within different traditions. This band harmonizes like the Beach Boys, that band like the Beatles, those guys like the Everly Brothers. This act is influenced by doo-wop, that act by choral music. Three-part, four-part, fifths, thirds. Obscured vocals, on the other hand, don't seem to be thought of as being part of a tradition—or, I should say, the tradition has not been formalized or canonized.  

There are some obvious touchstones, of course: the Jesus and Mary Chain, Galaxie 500, My Bloody Valentine, the entire shoegaze genre. But I don't think it's that narrow. Nor does it get at the many ways in which bands might choose to blur or subvert their vocals—extra reverb being only one avenue to travel. For instance, I was thinking similarly about the anti-frontman, low mixes (and/or the lo-fi aesthetic), and spoken word as I was writing my Spiderland book. That too is part of the larger tradition in indie rock of obscuring the lead vocal. It's one part studio affectation, one part anti-rock-star persona.

I've been mulling this over for a couple of weeks or so now, digging through my collection and my memory in search of some kind of thread, trying to discover how this aesthetic developed. Clearly it's a pandora's box: I came up with a good 50 or 60 songs stretching back to the 1960s, and that's just what's in my own collection. In fact the whole project has become so overwhelming to me that I'm almost ready to throw up my hands; I was looking for trees but by now all I see is forest.

This is something I'll probably be thinking about for a long time going forward, and may revisit here or elsewhere in a bigger way. But for now I just want to throw the idea out there in hopes some of you readers might think about it too.

Rather than tackle the big picture in one blog post, I'd rather start with a few antecedents as examples of the various threads I have winding through my mind, in some attempt to hone in on this aesthetic and how it has evolved from an experimental recording technique into full-blown musical genres (plural!). Am I forgetting anything? Let me know in the comments.

 

1. Turn Up the Reverb

• The Flamingos: I Only Have Eyes For You (1959)
• Buffalo Springfield: Expecting To Fly (1967)
• The Monkees: Porpoise Song (1971)

Reverb has been a staple of the studio for decades, and in fact dates even further back to the natural echo supplied by singing in cathedrals or opera houses. It's used on about a million classic songs, so it's hard to say what was the turning point from an artificial studio effect that took away some of the dryness of a cold microphone to its use in a more extreme fashion. These are three songs by acts who didn't regularly indulge the echo, but the effect clearly impacts the loveliness of these individual songs.

2. The Anti-Frontman

• The Velvet Underground: The Black Angel's Death Song (1967)

There are countless ways in which the Velvet Underground were the anti-Beatles and the anti-Stones, and Lou Reed's whole persona as a frontman is definitely one of them. Reed's New York cool was tough and stylish, but it didn't swagger like Jagger or preen like McCartney. Reed's vocals had their hooks and melodies, but they also sometimes veered toward monologue. His voice was also sometimes subsumed by the music; cacophony was often the point for VU songs, and Reed's voice is kept low in the mix (relative to, say, Mick Jagger always front and center). It's an approach that has had a long-lasting influence on countless bands who willingly reject the cliche Rock Star persona and its flamboyant lead singer, to the point that being an anti-rock star is just as much of a cliche.

3. All about the Atmosphere

 

• Can: Yoo Doo Right (1969)
• Silver Apples: Oscillations (1968)

Around the same time as the VU, the so-called "cosmic music" movement coalescing in Germany was exploring all variety of ways to break down the traditional song form. Repetition and improvisation were major components for all of these krautrock bands, many of whom were instrumental. Can was not. "Yoo Doo Right," from Monster Movie, their first official album and the only one to feature U.S. transplant Malcolm Mooney on vocals, is a 20-minute, side-long epic; it's rhythmic, hypnotic, and constantly forward-moving. Mooney's voice, like Reed's in "The Black Angel's Death Song," is usually equal in the mix to the other instruments, only occasionally reaching above the fray. His repetitive lyrics and melody become just as mesmerizing as the rhythms and the guitar textures.

"Texture" is a key word. It's not surprising that many of the bands and genres that would later embrace effaced vocals are also musically spacious and atmospheric. The Silver Apples are probably the first space rock band (if that's different from cosmic music); the music they made was vast and otherworldly, helped along by Simeon's massive synthesizer set-up and Dan Taylor's steady but unobtrusive drumming. Though the duo didn't exactly treat their voices with effects, their near-monotone harmonies were layered over every song. Each track on their debut album seems like a variation on the same idea. Their twin vocals ultimately fold into the atmosphere of the overall album.

4. Distortion!

• The Sonics: Shot Down (1965)

As far as I can tell the first use of distorted vocals wasn't acheived through adding a special effect, but rather by simply pushing the recording levels into the red. Garage acts like the Sonics were loud and raucous, and if that meant screaming at full lung a little too close to the microphone, so be it. Push the needles into the red—that's how you know they're not fucking around!

How does this all lead to chillwave and Grizzly Bear and Radio Dept. and the myriad bands today cluttering the indie landscape (for better or worse)? It's a long and winding road, to be sure. To me it seems a fascinating road to travel, even if at times it borders on something so pervasive as to be mundane. At any rate this is something I'll likely return to in future posts (famous last words, I know). If any of you out there have your own theories or input or know of others who have already traced this trajectory, let me know!

 

Hallogallo 2010

Just a quick post to note that WNYC is streaming the recent Lincoln Center performance from Hallogallo 2010 (aka Michael Rother, Steve Shelley, and Aaron Mullan performing the songs of Neu! and Harmonia). It's an excellent recording; have a listen.

My Listening Hours: Krautrock Roundup

As mentioned, I bought a shit-ton of krautrock in the last few months, trying to dig into the genre deeper than the more obvious acts like Can, Neu!, and Faust. Surely I'm not done, though I may be ready for a little break. The number of 20-minute rock excursions I've added to my library in six months is too much! Not all of it has been memorable; some of it has been amazing.

The Organisation: Tone Float (1970)
Kraftwerk: s/t (1970)
Kraftwerk: Kraftwerk 2 (1972)
Kraftwerk: Ralf & Florian (1973)
Kraftwerk has been one of those shameful holes in my musical knowledge for more years than I'd like to admit. I think back in my 20s, when I was first (and heavily) into electronic music, the idea of "old" electronic music sounded unappealing to me. The idea of dated synths and drum pads just seemed really silly, no matter how many people told me Kraftwerk were a seminal band who influenced the entire genre. History just wasn't where my head was at back then. Now that I'm headlong into the 70s German scene Kraftwerk are on my radar once again. I still haven't gotten to their more well-known and influential albums, but the opportunity to acquire all four of their early, out-of-print albums presented itself, so I jumped on it. I love taking things chronologically anyway.

It's interesting, I think, to come at these albums with a better understanding of the German music scene at the time rather than the context of what the group would later accomplish. Starting with Tone Float, the 1970 album by the pre-Kraftwerk group the Organisation, this music fits in much more with the kind of spaced out ambient rock of a band like Ash Ra Tempel. In that context Tone Float is okay but not terrific. Rechristened Kraftwerk the same year, the reconfigured group released two more albums still roughly in this vein--long songs, mostly traditional instruments (guitar, drums, bass, flute). Each subsequent release is better than the last, gaining a little more focus and composure. Ralf & Florian, from 1973, is the best of the bunch. Here the duo introduce more electonic sounds into their arsenal (though guitars are still the primary melody producers). The whole album is beautifully textured, more rhythmic in spots, and more varied.

• Kraftwerk: Elektrisches Roulette

Ash Ra Tempel: s/t (1971)
Ash Ra Tempel: Join Inn (1973)
Klaus Schulze: Irrlicht (1972)
Two albums, four songs, each clocking in around twenty minutes and each a loose, improvised jam. Klaus Schulze is on drums for both albums and his work is light and airy, often cymbal-driven, keeping the songs open and atmospheric as Hartmut Enke and Manuel Gotsching noodle around on bass and guitar, respectively. The songs don't exactly bore but they don't command attention either. Join Inn's second track, "Jenseits," is perhaps the most notable here if only because it differs  from the other tracks. Schulze takes to the synthesizers for some droning notes as Gotsching too makes his instrument more textural, leaving Enke to draw out a languid bass line. The track is more overtly dark and moody than the others and is probably the best of the bunch.

In between these two albums Schulze had quit the band to embark on a solo career (he left again after Join Inn). Irrlicht is his debut and bears some resemblence to "Jenseits" in that it is all about the drone. Unlike that song, and unlike the rest of Schulze's vast discography, Irrlicht doesn't contain any synthesizers. It's all done with organs which makes its three tracks all the more ominous an gloomy. This is serious drone music and at times can feel quite oppressive. I'd like to hear some of his subsequent albums just to see how/if his approach evolved with the integration of more electronic instruments.

• Klaus Schulze: 2. Satz: Gewitter Energy Rise Energy Collaps

Popol Vuh: In den Garten Pharaos (1971)
Popol Vuh: Das Hohelied Salamos (1975)
Popol Vuh's second album, In den Garten Pharaos, is right in line with the Schulze and Ash Ra Tempel stuff that was being released around the same time. I don't know the biographic histories of most these bands, but I'd be shocked if PV's Florian Fricke and Klaus Schulze were not peers and friends. The sound of this album's second track, "Vuh," is right in line with what Schulze would do on Irrlicht a year later. I prefer "Vuh" to anything on Irrlicht, however, due mostly to the work of percussionist Holger Trulzsch. His shimmering cymbals ride along Fricke's droning organ until midway through the track, when the drone intensifies to a full-on clamor as Trulzsh clangs away at his cymbals. He plays in a violent frenzy yet never attacks the rest of his kit. It's all cymbals--a lesson in how playing minimally does not mean losing dynamics.

Apparently Popol Vuh abandoned their space rock habits after In den Garten Pharaos, as is made clear on their sixth album, Das Hohelied Salamos. Here Fricke is joined by an entirely different cast of musicians, including vocalist Djong Yun. The songs are shorter and more noodly. It's full of sitar and tabla, and guitarist Daniel Fichelscher basically solos from beginning to end. It's much busier than the other album but, strangely, more tedious. Fichelscher's playing is too flashy for my tastes.

• Popol Vuh: Steh Auf, Zieh Mich Dir Nach (from Das Hohelied Salamos)

Tangerine Dream: Alpha Centauri (1971)
Clearly the droning organ was in vogue in Germany in 1970-72! It's all over Tangerine Dream's second album, Alpha Centauri. Like "Vuh," however, it's not always the main attraction. Once "Fly and Collision of Comas Sola" gets going, the drums really kick the song into another space. Christopher Franke's playing is practically the inverse of Trulzsch's: it's utterly driven by the toms, basically constant fills. It absolutley electrifies the sustained organs and synths, eventually drowning them out completely. His epic drumming returns on the bonus track, "Ultima Thule," which was originally a single released at the same time as Alpha Centauri but did not appear on the album. Franke is a monster.

• Tangerine Dream: Ultima Thule, Pt. 1

Guru Guru: UFO (1970)
After so much drone it was refreshing to hear the first few songs on Guru Guru's debut. Maybe it helps that the band is led by its drummer, Mani Neumeier, meaning it was probably a foregone conclusion that most the songs on UFO were going to have some punch. "Next Time See You at the Dalai Lhama," the one song I was previously familiar with, is the highlight. It's a two chord chomper, aggressive and simple. The first half of the album has a similar high energy though the last couple tracks descend, again, into somewhat directionless improv. Unlike the other albums already discussed, Guru Guru shows some real muscle in their music, even when they're venturing into more spacious territory. The guitars are thick, the drums hit hard. If we're splitting kraut-hairs, I'd say the music of Guru Guru is a bit closer to Amon Düül II's noisier jams than, say, Ash Ra Tempel's cosmic music.

Incidentally, Moebius Plank Neumeier's Zero Set shows Neumeier's growth after a dozen years. The 1983 album (recorded 1982) is very far removed from UFO. I wrote about that album here.

• Guru Guru: Next Time See You at the Dalai Lhama

Embryo: Opal (1970)
Neumeier, as I understand it, came to Guru Guru from a free jazz background. So too did the guys in Embryo. In fact this group is the most overt example of jazz's influence on krautrock, since core member Edgar Hoffmann's primary instrument is the saxophone. Opal shares the spirit of acts like Guru Guru or Amon Düül II—fast and loose rock with a dash of humor and improvisation.

• Embryo: Revolution

Harmonia: Deluxe (1975)
Harmonia '76: Tracks and Traces (1976)
There are of course two strains (more if you want to split hairs) to the krautrock tag: the improvised/experimental rock, and the electronica. Most of the albums I picked up in the last six months fall into the former category, though those that fit the latter are actually my favorites of the bunch. I've already claimed that Cluster's Soweisoso is one of my favorite purchases of the year so far. Right up there too is Harmonia's Deluxe. Go figure, since two-thirds of Harmonia are, in fact, Cluster. The other third is Michael Rother of Neu!, and Deluxe does at times feel like a mashup of those two groups. Most of the record is closer to Cluster's sound—more electronic than organic. One song, "Monza," sounds like an outtake from Neu! 75, released the same year.

Hearing Harmonia in the context of the other records I picked up this year reminds me how far a little structure can take you. Deluxe is a welcome breath of fresh air if only for its repetition, versus all the open-endedness of the other records I picked up. Tracks and Traces, released the following year with Brian Eno in tow, is (perhaps predictably) another story. It begins with the Deluxe-like "Welcome" and "Atmosphere" but soon enough the rhythm section evaporates and the whole thing becomes much more of an ambient record. Ambient, not drone. There's still a world of difference between what Eno and Harmonia are doing on this record compared to Schulz's drone.

• Harmonia: Notre Dame
• Harmonia '76: Atmosphere

Conrad Schnitzler: Con (1978)
Schnitzler was an early member of both Tangerine Dream and Kluster but has been a solo artist since 1973. Con finds him a few years into an extremely prolific career, and is my first exposure to his work. It's made of five tracks, opening with the nearly thirteen-minute "Electric Garden" and followed by four shorter pieces. Unlike Harmonia, Schnitzler's work feels utterly electronic. No live drums, no guitars, no vocals. This is pure electronica. The opener is actually my least favorite thing here, mostly due to a repetitive rising and falling tone that is almost too childlike in its simplicity. Around that tone are other, interesting sounds—dunks, squiggles, plinking beats ping-ponging left to right—but that up/down, see-sawing tone dumbs the track down. The rest of the record is more successful. They have many of the same pulses and static and hums, sometimes quite simply and effortlessly presented yet never wearing out their welcome.

• Conrad Schnitzler: Ballet Statique

My Listening Hours: Best of 2010 So Far

Harry Nilsson: Pandemonium Shadow Show
After living with two different Harry Nilsson greatest hits comps for many years, last year I finally got around to picking up Nilsson Schmilsson, widely lauded as his best album. It's good—it's great!—but it also left me a little cold. Perhaps it was simply a matter of knowing so many of the songs already from the comps. Still, there were two other minor strikes: the songs I didn't know were mostly just good, not outstanding. And the songs I did know, aside maybe from "Gotta Get Up," are not among the upper echelon of my favorite Nilsson songs (that echelon being pretty fucking high up in the atmosphere). Nevertheless I know that Nilsson is too much of a genius not to warrant more full-length acquisitions. So I went with an earlier album, Pandemonium Shadow Show. All that is a preface to this little secret tip: Pandemonium Shadow Show is way better than Nilsson Schmilsson. From the biblical "Ten Little Indians" to the Kinks-like "Cuddly Toy" to what must be the first-ever mash-up "You Can't Do That," which is a Frankenstein's monster of disparate Beatles lyrics, Pandemonium is a fun, funny, breezy album that is also an incredible display of Nilsson's mastery of pop craft. Shit, I need to go get another Nilsson album.

• Harry Nilsson: Ten Little Indians

Brian Eno: Here Come the Warm Jets
As with Nilsson I've been slowly but surely filling in my Eno collection, this being my third Eno acquisition in the last couple of years after Another Green World and Before and After Science. Though I thoroughly love those records, this might be my favorite of them all so far. Warm Jets is Eno's first solo album; whereas an album like Another Green World plays like a 50/50 transition between his rock past and ambient future, Warm Jets is pretty firmly rooted in the rock world he came from, with dashes of Brian Ferry and David Bowie-isms sprinkled all around. Incidentally I just finished Geeta Dayal's book on Another Green World, which only makes me want to hear more Eno, stat (specifically On Land, Discreet Music, No Pussyfooting, and Music for Airports—none of which I expect to sound like Warm Jets; so, Taking Tiger Mountain [by Strategy] too.)

• Brian Eno: Some Of Them Are Old

Radio Dept.: Clinging to a Scheme
It took me a long time to realize that the Radio Dept.'s first album, Lesser Matters, was my favorite album of 2004. It took me a little longer to realize it was possibly my favorite album of the last decade. No, it doesn't feel "important" like Kid A or Funeral or some Animal Collective record, but I sure did play the shit out of it consistently for years. Still do. It's a rare record that can go three, four, five, six years and still never feel played to death. I was much cooler on their followup, Pet Grief, which has a couple of terrific songs and a lot of atmosphere. So when it came to their latest I really wasn't sure which way they were going to go. Happily, I'm realizing this is my favorite new release of the year. Just like Lesser Matters, I just keep listening to it! Need there be more justification? It's hazy and poppy and cool and warm and light and spacey and fuzzy and fun and melancholy and great.

• Radio Dept: This Time Around

Josh Ritter: So Runs the World Away
Dr. Dog: Shame Shame
Two more favorite new releases of the year, both of which I've already gone on about. (Shame Shame, So Runs the World).

Cluster: Soweisoso
Silver Apples: s/t
Telling, perhaps, that of the seventeen krautrock albums I picked up in the last six months, only one makes it into my "best" category. Blame Faust IV, but the bar is fucking high. This is my first Cluster album and man do I hope the rest of their discography is as good as this. Soweisoso is an essential album for anyone interested in the history of electronica—utterly ahead of its time. Even more impressive in that regard is the Silver Apples' debut from 1968, an otherworldly psychedelic electronica. The album gets a little tedious toward the end—I swear the duo is recycling rhythms on a couple tracks—but their best ideas are still astounding, especially considering when the album was made.

• Cluster: Zum Wohl
• Silver Apples: Oscillations

Spoon: Transference
There are two kinds of Spoon fans in the world—first-time fans and long-time fans. Every Spoon album is just similar enough yet just different enough to keep the long-time fans happy; every album also serves as a perfectly acceptable point of entry for the uninitiated. You might have your favorite Spoon album, but it's not essential that some newbie start with that one. Girls Can Tell, Gimme Fiction, whatever. Start where you like. Right? Well, I think that was true up to the newest. Transference is a great album but I think it's made for the long-time fans. It's the Spoon recipe—Britt Daniel oozes cool, the rhythm section drives every song, the guitars play only the minimally required amount, the production is so detail-oriented as to be more interesting than the music in spots—but it seems to require just a little more patience. It took me a few listens to identify why that was so. At first I thought it was the production—the fact that the band interspersed a lot of raw demo material with the more polished stuff. But that wasn't it, because Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, my favorite of theirs, actually has more production tricks and is a sonically weirder record. With more listens I realized that Transference contains more drawn-out instrumental vamps and jams than their other records. "The Mystery Zone" feels like it could end around the three minute mark but instead goes on, without a lot of variation, for another two minutes. "Out Go the Lights" does too, and "Nobody Gets Me but You." It bothered me at first. Bored me, I mean. But with more and more listens—awesome tracks like "Is Love Forever" and "Who Makes Your Money" kept me coming back—the vibe of Transference really sank in. Which is to say I love the album but I'd recommend almost any other—more specifically, Kill the Moonlight or Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga—to the uninitiated.

• Spoon: The Mystery Zone

Wire: Pink Flag
Like Harry Nilsson above, I've lived with a couple of Wire compilations for a long time, the pleasures of which somehow barred me from getting around to their proper full lengths. Pink Flag is, of course, terrific. Acquiring this album around the same time as the new Spoon brings home to me what that band has taken from Wire: the elemental nature of rock—a few chords, a simple beat, a lot of attitude. I look forward to picking up more proper Wire albums in the future (I have a feeling I'll like Chairs Missing more).

• Wire: Three Girl Rhumba

Vampire Weekend: Contra
Contra is not too different from Vampire Weekend's debut, but that's okay with me. First and foremost these guys are an excellent guitar pop band, their songs full of perfect melodies, witty lyrics, bounding rhythms, effervescent guitar runs. Who can complain about that? It falls short of the debut, partly because Contra doesn't benefit from feeling "new" the way the first album did, and partly because Contra falls off toward the end. "Giving Up the Gun" is too polished and the closing track, "I Think UR a Contra," sounds almost like a Coldplay song. (Honestly can't be a good thing when I hear a song and think, "I wish Coldplay were singing this instead.") Those aside, songs like "White Sky" and "Cousins" and "Run" are as great as anything they've done before.

• Vampire Weekend: White Sky

Mountains: Choral
Along with all the krautrock the other genre I've gotten deeper into this year is ambient/drone. Of the handful of such albums I've picked up, Choral is probably the most spacious and most elegant. The group paints vast, open landscapes through a combination of Stars of the Lid-like guitar drones and occasional, more traditionally played acoustic motifs. The best kind of ambient music is the kind that lets you sink into its atmosphere yet doesn't bore; this is exactly what Mountains accomplish.

• Mountains: Telescope

Talk Talk: Spirit of Eden
Writing my book on Spiderland I was reminded of a common claim I've long heard about the so-called genre "post rock"—namely that the genre tag was originally coined in an attempt to describe Talk Talk's later albums a few years before Slint came along and the description was sort of co-opted to describe them instead. Seeing as I'd never really heard Talk Talk before, it seemed like imperative that I do so. Thank God I did. Spirit of Eden is a gorgeous album, almost like a song cycle. Its six songs drift along, ebbing and flowing like one cohesive work. Spirit of Eden is moody without being morose, inventive yet humble, really a (softly) glowing album.

• Talk Talk: Eden

The Time it Was Ahead of is Behind Us Now

 
 

Listening to Zero Set, a collaboration between Dieter Moebius (Cluster), Conny Plank, and Mani Neumeier (Guru Guru), I have the strange but simultaneous sense that it's both dated and ahead of its time. On the one hand, something about fits right in with the kind of stuff I was listening to around 1995–97, like the Macro Dub Infection compilation or any number of rhythm-forward bands who got some notice in the confluence of Tortoise/trip hop/Warp/industrial/etc. But then again that does mean it was ahead of its time, because Zero Set was recorded in 1982. 1982! This does not sound like it came from that decade.

Two reasons why this is so: first, no cheese synths wafting or plinking at the heart of these songs. (How did krautrock so easily melt into new age by the early/mid-80s?). Second, and more notably: those drums! Mani Neumeier is a monster behind the kit on this record. What gets me even more is the production of his drums. Can someone point me to a album made in 1982 or earlier that had drum sound as beautifully crisp and full as on "Speed Display"?

• Moebius Plank Neumeier: Speed Display

 

Here's Where the Obsessive Part Happened

1. The more ambient stuff I've been getting into, coupled with the renewed desire for more krautrock and early electronica pioneers, has led me to finally giving Klaus Schulze a try. I've never really given Schulze much serious consideration before—a quick look at this 100+ album discography was enough to scare me off—but he's been on my periphery for a while. With no real sense of how to enter such a sprawling discography that spans 40 years, I figured the best thing to do was start at the beginning and pick up Irrlicht, from 1972—three tracks adding up to fifty minutes, notable for being droney ambient soundscapes but using no synthesizers or electronic instruments. It's a good album, in an intellectual sort of way—I'm not going to bust it out at parties, in other words. But it's a promising beginning.

2. I was at Amoeba a week later and, despite no longer being able to load CDs onto my ancient Mac and only being able to hear them while driving (something I don't do often), I bought more new-to-me krautrock: Harmonia's Deluxe and Ash Ra Tempel's Join Inn (which I mistook for their debut because I saw that Schulze was in the lineup, and I'd just read that, as he'd done with Tangerine Dream, he left the group not long after forming it; in fact he briefly returned for this two-track record).

3. Geeking out about my new purchases, despite being unable to hear them, I started wasting time on Wikipedia and ILM. Because frankly, the web of krautrock connections in the 70s is baffling. Schulze started Tangerine Dream with Conrad Schnitzler, who was simultaneously in Kluster with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. Then Schnitzler and Schulze quit Tangerine Dream and Schulze started Ash Ra Tempel, which he then quit (and who eventually, years later, changed their name to Ashra). Then Schnitzler quit Kluster and they changed their name to Cluster and continued as a duo. Then Cluster teamed up with Michael Rother of Neu! and the trio called themselves Harmonia, which functioned simultaneously with Neu!. Then they made a record with Brian Eno and called themselves Harmonia 76. Then Neu! broke up and Harmonia broke up and Cluster kept making records and Michael Rother went solo and his partner in Neu!, Klaus Dinger, started La Düsseldorf. Then Cluster made their own record with Eno, which they called Cluster & Eno, then they made another and called it Moebius Roedelius Eno. Or something like that? Meanwhile Schulze kept making a million solo records, and so did Schnitzler, and I haven't even gotten to other iconic bands who were more on the organic psyche-rock tip than they were electronica, like Can and Faust and Guru Guru and Amon Düül and Amon Düül II and Amon Düül UK. And then, you know, Kraftwerk. And I even read somewhere that the Scorpions of all bands factored in somewhere though I don't know if that's all true.

If you've ever read Homer's Iliad, you know there's this ridiculous chapter early on where Agamemnon inspects his ships before they go to war, and something like 852 different characters are introduced, all of whom factor into the epic at one point or another, so good luck remembering who's who when they show up for their turn in the spotlight. Reading about all the different krautrock permutations sort of felt like that chapter.

4. Now seems like a good time to remind you of my obsessive nature. When I realized I loved Graham Greene, I decided that I needed to read each and every one of his twenty-eight novels. In a row, in chronological order. (Almost done.) When I realized I loved the Byrds, I decided I needed to buy their albums in chronological order, roughly spacing out each new acquisition to correspond with how much time separated their original releases, so that I would go through the cycle of consuming, digesting, and craving that a Byrds fan in the 1960s/70s would. For God's sakes I keep track of every single album I listen to every single week, and I do this manually—none of this automated last.fm bullshit. And then every three months I look at this list and analyze it statistically. All that is to preface this: I made a list.

5. Quick interjection: I said to my brilliant wife the other day, in all seriousness, "I fear I may be a dilettante." 

6. In an effort to wrap my head around the environment in which all these records were made, I tracked down all these bands' discographies, mingled them all together, and organized them by year. I find this immensely helpful as far as tracing the roots of the electronica strain of krautrock and also just seeing what came first for all of these bands, in a "you can't have Sgt. Peppers without Pet Sounds and you can't have Pet Sounds without Revolver" sort of way. I can't expect to get all of these—I'm not that crazy—but this list does give me a kind of road map as to what to get first, etc.

So, presented for your benefit and/or bemusement: krautrock, 1969–1979. If I forgot any seminal or otherwise noteworthy acts that factor into this universe, let me know so I can update my list.

1969
Amon Düül: Psychedelic Underground and Collapsing/Singvögel Rückwärts & Co.
Amon Düül II: Phallus Dei
Can: Monster Movie
Holger Czukay: Canaxis

• Can: Father Cannot Yell
• Holger Czukay: Boat-Woman-Song

1970
Amon Düül II: Yeti
Can: Soundtracks
Embryo: Opal
Eruption (aka Conrad Schnitzler and friends): Eruption
Guru Guru: UFO
Kluster: Klopfzeichen
Kraftwerk: Kraftwerk
The Organisation (aka Kraftwerk): Tone Float
Popol Vuh: Affenstunde
Tangerine Dream: Electronic Meditation

• Amon Düül II: Burning Sister
• Embryo: You Don't Know What's Happening

1971
Amon Düül: Paradieswärts Düül
Amon Düül II: Tanz der Lemminge/Dance of the Lemmings
Ash Ra Tempel: Ash Ra Tempel
Can: Tago Mago
Cluster: Cluster
Embryo: Rache
Faust: Faust
Guru Guru: Hinten
Kluster: Zwei-Osterei
Popol Vuh: In den Gärten Pharaos
Tangerine Dream: Alpha Centauri

• Faust: Meadow Meal

1972
Agitation Free: Malesch
Amon Düül: Disaster
Amon Düül II: Carnival in Babylon and Wolf City
Ash Ra Tempel: Schwingungen
Can: Ege Bamyasi
Cluster: Cluster II
Embryo: Father Sons & Holy Ghosts
Faust: Faust So Far
Guru Guru: Känguru
Klaus Schulze: Irrlicht
Kraftwerk: Kraftwerk 2
Neu!: Neu!
Popol Vuh: Hosianna Mantra
Tangerine Dream: Zeit
Timothy Leary & Ash Ra Tempel: Seven Up

• Klaus Schulze: Satz Gewitter Energy Rise Energy Collaps
• Tangerine Dream: Zeit

1973
Agitation Free: 2nd
Amon Düül II: Vive La Trance and Utopia
Ash Ra Tempel: Join Inn and Starring Rosi
Can: Future Days
Embryo: Steig aus, Rocksession, and We Keep On
Faust: The Faust Tapes
Faust & Tony Conrad: Outside of the Dream Syndicate
Guru Guru: Don't Call Us, We Call You and Guru Guru
Klaus Schulze: Cyborg
Kraftwerk: Ralf und Florian
Neu!: Neu! 2
Popol Vuh: Seligpreisung
Tangerine Dream: Atem

• Guru Guru: 200 Cliches

1974
Agitation Free: Last
Amon Düül II: Hijack
Ash Ra Tempel: Inventions for Electric Guitar
Can: Soon Over Babaluma
Cluster: Zuckerzeit
Faust: Faust IV
Guru Guru: Dance of the Flames and Der Elektrolurch
Harmonia: Muzik von Harmonia
Klaus Schulze: Blackdance
Kraftwerk: Autobahn
Popol Vuh: Einsjäger und Siebenjäger
Tangerine Dream: Phaedra

• Cluster: Caramel

1975
Amon Düül II: Made in Germany
Ash Ra Tempel: La Berceau de Cristal
Can: Landed
Embryo: Surfin
Guru Guru: Mani und seine Freunde
Harmonia: Deluxe
Klaus Schulze: Picture Music and Timewind
Kraftwerk: Radio-Activity
Neu!: Neu! 75
Popol Vuh: Das Hohelied Salomos and Aguirre
Tangerine Dream: Rubycon and Ricochet

• Neu!: Seeland

1976
Amon Düül II: Pyragony X
Ashra: New Age of Earth
Can: Flow Motion
Cluster: Soweisoso
Embryo: Bad Heads & Bad Cats
Guru Guru: Tango Fango
Harmonia 76: Tracks and Traces
Klaus Schulze: Moondawn
La Düsseldorf: La Düsseldorf
Popol Vuh: Letzte Tage - Letzte Nächte

• Harmonia 76: Welcome

1977
Tangerine Dream: Stratosfear
Amon Düül II: Almost Alive…
Ashra: Blackouts
Can: Saw Delight
Cluster & Eno: Cluster & Eno
Embryo: Apo Calypso
Guru Guru: Globetrotter
Klaus Schulze: Body Love and Mirage
Kraftwerk: Trans-Europe Express
Michael Rother: Flammende Herzen
Popol Vuh: Herz aus Glas
Tangerine Dream: Encore

1978
Can: Out of Reach
Cluster & Eno: After the Heat
Hans-Joachim Roedelius: Durch Die Wüste
Klaus Schulze: X
Kraftwerk: The Man-Machine
La Düsseldorf: Viva
Michael Hoenig: Departure from the Northern Wasteland
Michael Rother: Sterntaler
Moebius & Friends: Liliental
Popol Vuh: Brüder des Schattens - Söhne des Lichts and Nosferatu
Tangerine Dream: Cyclone

• Popol Vuh: Brüder Des Schattens

1979
Amon Düül II: Only Human
Ashra: Correlations
Can: Can
Cluster: Grosses Wasser
Embryo: Embryo's Reise
Guru Guru: Hey du
Hans-Joachim Roedelius: Jardin au Fou and Selbstportrait
Holger Czukay: Movies
Klaus Schulze: Dune
Richard Wahnfried (aka Klause Shulze): Time Actor
Michael Rother: Katzenmusik
Popol Vuh: Die Nacht der Seele
Tangerine Dream: Force Majeure

Where Did It Go From There?

1. Simultaneous to how it all started, in fact simultaneous to everything I've been listening to for the last year or two, was my ongoing if slow consumption of all things krautrock—a genre I thought I was "into" many years ago but upon further reflection all I really was "into" was Tago Mago and, like, Tortoise. So after grabbing the Neu! and La Düsseldorf discographies and beginning to do the same with Faust and Amon Düül II, I started itching for new catalogs to sink into. 

I don't know what made me search Cluster on eMusic for the fifth time since joining a year ago, but I did and was happily surprised to find that they'd added a bunch of their records. I'd snatch up a Cluster immediately no matter when I saw it, but this instance happened to dovetail with when I bought the Mountains album, so my ratio of instrumental spacey shit was increasing at a quick clip. I went for the earliest one on offer, Soweisoso. Since picking it up I've been going back to it over and over again as it continues to reveal itself to me. Cluster belongs on the "pioneering electronica" side of the krautrock coin, as opposed to the "pioneering prog/psychedelic" side, and from what I've heard they seem to do it better than the various Klaus Dinger-related projects. They're not as funny, nor as repetitive—Neu!'s two most definitive qualities—and they're more compelling for it.

• Cluster: Sowiesoso

2. Simultaneous to my purchase of Soweisoso and the Mountains record, my brilliant wife and I were having a conversation about music and our impending baby, due any day now. (In fact, I've been posting a song a day for Baby Tennent on my Tumblr, in case you don't follow me there.) This got my brilliant wife to repeat her desire for Raymond Scott's Soothing Sounds for Baby. Scott, if you're not familiar with him, was a pioneer of electronic music back in the 60s (as well as a jazz player who composed soundtracks for cartoons). He made three Soothing Sounds albums at the time—abstract sound works meant to lull your baby to sleep (each of the three albums was meant to be played at different points in the baby's development, with the sounds and patterns getting more and more complicated as the baby gets older). Again I went to eMusic and again I was surprised to find that they were available, despite my certainty that I'd looked once before and came up empty. I downloaded volume 1 and was pleasantly surprised to find that it... kinda sounded like Cluster! (Though the Soothing Sounds are about ten years older than Soweisoso.) Honestly, I had them on shuffle—yes, I even put my ambient music on shuffle sometimes—and I wasn't always sure who was who. That's a good thing, and I don't really give a shit if this soothes Baby Tennent or not. It soothes me!

• Raymond Scott: Sleepy Time

3. Simultaneous to these purchases—this is roughly that week between Christmas and New Years—I received the first Silver Apples album as a gift. I'd put it on an Amazon wishlist about three years ago and never revisited the wishlist again. My Sister-in-Law has just been winnowing down the wishlist every year and has finally gotten to the point where everything on the list is totally obscure and mysterious to her, so she took a shot with this one—thank God! Silver Apples gets a little repetitive after a while--at least two songs seem to use the exact same bassline—but all such negatives are erased by the constant reminder that these guys were making this record in freakin' 1967. This got me thinking about the similarly pioneering United States of America along with the Raymond Scott and Cluster records, and I got this notion that not only do I need to return to electronic music—a genre I'd once been pretty into, some time back!--but I needed specifically to immerse myself in the genre's origin point. What a great and inspiring world to explore, don't you think? Then I was directed to this blog which is uploading 62 discs worth of 60s-70s electronica and I was overcome by fear of what that would do to my hard drive. I mean, that's an amazing resource but I think I need to take baby steps. I'm going to act like I didn't see it.

• Silver Apples: Program

4. Simultaneous to that, I keep checking in on my friends' blog the Cargo Culte, which consistently has excellent mixes (not counting, okay, when they do powerviolence clusterfucks, but that's just me). I don't know how many random songs I picked up from them over the course of that week, but it was a bunch and they too fit this mold of instrumental, ambient, drone, space, electronic.

• The Bug: Freak Freak
• Oneohtrix Point Never: Hyperdawn

5. Simultaneous to that, I was reading that Coke Machine Glow blurb for Mountains' Choral, which noted that 2009 was a really excellent year for ambient records, so I scribbled all their recommendations down and generally kept an eye out specifically for other sites' mentions of the genre's 09 peaks. Most often championed seemed to be Emeralds, so I gobbled up What Happened; and I also started hearing of White Rainbow, so I tracked down New Clouds. The latter speaks to me more; there's something cold and unwelcoming about the Emeralds disc, though it is good, whereas White Rainbow's four twentysomething-minute tracks manage to be hazy and dense and spacious and varied and immersive all at once.

• Emeralds: Up in the Air
• White Rainbow: Major Spillage

My Listening Year: My Favorite Albums of the Year

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.

Tomorrow: 75 songs. Portrait of a listening year.

My Listening Hours: Favorite Downloads, July–September

I must admit I bookmarked a ton of good-looking blog posts with every intention of going back to listen and/or download the mp3s, but I utterly failed to follow through. Still, I did manage to find eleven new-to-me songs that really knocked me out. Many of these tracks came from the Cargo Culte and For the Sake of the Song. I recommend you follow them if you're not already.

Don't forget, there's a convenient little mp3 player down in the lower-left corner. just press play and kill forty-five minutes. The songs might look a little random but I actually think this makes a pretty cohesive playlist.

• Wooden Shjips: I Hear the Vibrations (2009)
• Steve Young: One Car Funeral Procession (1981)
• Theoretical Girls: You Got Me (1978)
• Phoenix: 1901 (2009)
• John Vanderslice: Too Much Time (2009)
• Guru Guru: Next Time See You at the Dalai Lhama (1970)
• The Delmore Brothers: I'm Lonesome Without You (1946)
• Cowboy Junkies: Working On A Building (1988)
• Cluster: Caramel (1974)
• Harmonia: Watussi (1974)
• The Modern Lovers: Government Center (1976)

My Listening Hours: Missed Connections

Usually I follow up "the rest" with a brief rundown of "the worst"—albums I picked up that I wound up actively disliking. Happily for me, that didn't really happen in the last three months. That said, there were plenty of albums that I just didn't connect with. Maybe it's their fault, maybe it's mine. Maybe they're actually mediocre; maybe I just need to hear them in another mindset, some other month or year. I'd still recommend most or all of these albums, with reservations and/or personal caveats that may not apply to you.

David Bowie: Low
For whatever reason, I seem only to connect with Low—supposedly Bowie's apex—on an intellectual level. It's certainly a daring record, thanks to the Eno-aided second, instrumental half. But I'm just not connecting. The first, more "pop" side, has a couple of high points (most notably "Sound and Vision"—a song no Of Montreal fan should hear, lest their illusions be shattered), but there are just as many tracks that are kinda ho-hum. The instrumental half, too, has its peaks, though I don't think it ever rises above Eno's best work. Low isn't a bad record—actually, it's a good record!—but it fell flat in the face of the expectations I'd built up for it.

• David Bowie: Sound and Vision

Emitt Rhodes: s/t
I stumbled across Emitt Rhodes with no prior awareness of him whatsoever. The album was recorded in 1970, apparently in Rhodes' own garage with Rhodes playing every single instrument and backing vocal. The blog I picked the record up from claimed the result was something as transcendent as Oddessey and Oracle or Pet Sounds, which it clearly isn't. Rather, Rhodes sounds like Paul McCartney's star pupil. The pop craft at work here is near-flawless, though I think the record lacks that intangible quality that takes it to the next level. I can't hear any soul behind Rhodes' lyrics or in his delivery. When he sings "live til you die," I kind of want to slap him. It gives you a renewed appreciation for how much feeling McCartney could eke out of a platitude. But! At his best, as on the opener, "With My Face on the Floor," Rhodes' songs can sound like perfect little McCartney b-sides, which I mean as a compliment. 

• Emitt Rhodes: With My Face on the Floor

Karen Dalton: In My Own Time
Karen Dalton, on the other hand, has the opposite problem from Rhodes. On her second album, 1971's In My Own Time, Dalton's voice is nearly all ache and emotion—to the point that it often overwhelms the song itself. Like Rhodes, Dalton is able to hit a few unquestionable home runs, but her album becomes a bit tedious by the end.

• Karen Dalton: Something on Your Mind

Josh Ritter: The Animal Years
I picked up The Animal Years at the same time as The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, and for that reason this album might have suffered a little. It's a slower, less fun—almost turgid—record compared to its followup. There are no real low points, and a number of high points—the first four songs are solid pop songs, and the epic "Thin Blue Flame" shows an ambition not seen on the later record. But somewhere around the midpoint the whole thing starts to feel, not exactly boring, but inessential. Still, when Ritter is at his best he can really knock it out.

• Josh Ritter: Wolves

The National: Alligator and Boxer
The National are one of those bands that I just never dove for. I've had a handful of mp3s for a few years, and I like them, but I always had the sneaking suspicion that they were... boring. Hearing both Alligator and Boxer, that sense is somehow dispelled and reinforced at the same time. On the one hand—especially with Boxer—each time I put it on I get the sense that everything is about to click. I hear something new, lock in on a lyric I hadn't heard before, pick up on some musical detail (by the way, the drummer for the National? Secret weapon). But by album's end I invariably feel deadened by Matt Berringer's insistence on using the same four notes for every single melody. I think it didn't help, too, that I got these albums at the exact same time (in fact, through the generosity of a friend, I got everything by the National at once—these two plus Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers, Cherry Tree, and Virginia, the latter two I still haven't even listened to yet). The National strikes me as a group you need to take slow, song by song, over the course of many focused listenings for many days or weeks or even months. I haven't given them that kind of attention. Each time I listen to Boxer, or a song from either album pops up on shuffle, I think this will be the week that I give it that attention. But it hasn't happened yet.

• The National: Secret Meeting (from Alligator)
• The National: Mistaken for Strangers (from Boxer)

Jorge Ben: África Brasil
I've got a song by Jorge Ben, "Pais Tropical," that is absolutely one of my favorite songs ever. It's like Os Mutantes, only better than just about anything Os Mutantes did. But I didn't have an album by Ben. I'd heard this was one of his classics, so when I saw it a couple months ago I snapped it up. For what it is—tropicalia with an afrofunk edge—it's good. But it's not what I wanted. This album comes from 1976, about seven or eight years later, I think, than the era of Ben I'd most like to investigate. 

• Jorge Ben: Camisa 10 da Gávea

Amon Düül II: Phallus Dei
My previous review of this record pretty much said it all. Phallus Dei has its moments, but most the time the band finds a way to irritate in the middle of what might otherwise be a great track. Yeti, the only other album I've heard by them, tempers the irritating moments better than here (though it doesn't eradicate them).

• Amon Düül II: Luzifers Ghilom

Grizzly Bear: Yellow House
Grizzly Bear is one of those bands I feel I'm supposed to love. People I know whose tastes run similar to mine flip for this band, and this album in particular. But I just can't feel it. I've had a handful of songs by the band for a long time—I like them, don't love them. But I was told they were an "album band," so when their discography showed up on eMusic I finally took the plunge. Nothing has really changed: I still think they're okay but not game-changing. I'm curious to hear the new album when it comes out, to see where they go next—so I'm told, it might be a direction I'll like more.

• Grizzly Bear: Knife

My Listening Hours: The Rest of January–March

Neu!: Neu! 2
La Düsseldorf: s/t and Viva
I've already said my share about Neu! 2—probably my favorite Neu! album, so long as you delete the four tape-speed experiments sprinkled throughout. In fact something similar can be said for all three Neu! albums; none are perfect, none the quintessential, if-you-only-get-one-make-it-this-one record. There's always one or two tracks that see Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother slipping off the experimental ledge. So I made a little customized greatest hits from all three records that feels, to me, more satisfying.

For all intents and purposes you can add the best of La Düsseldorf's output to that playlist. La Düsseldorf was Dinger's band following his split with Rother (who went on to Harmonia—a group I haven't checked out yet). I expected a more pronounced break from the Neu! sound with La Düsseldorf, but much of both La Düsseldorf and Viva follow fairly naturally. The synths are still there (along with other instruments), Dinger's "navajo beat" is still in effect, and there's still that balance of prog-ambient and, well, goofiness. La Düsseldorf's opening track, "Düsseldorf," features a single lyric, "Düsseldorf," repeated off and on for thirteen minutes. Track two, "La Düsseldorf," features the same lyric over different but similar music for five more minutes. This is a four-track album, so we're already halfway through. Each song by itself is great, but the repetition does get monotonous. So like Neu! 2, we've got Dinger once again making something that is almost terrific but is hampered, ultimately, by its nuttiness. Viva, the band's second album, fares better—due in large part to the twenty-minute masterpiece that is "Cha Cha  2000." It's easily one of the best songs Dinger has ever had a hand in.

• Neu: Neuschnee
• La Düsseldorf: Düesseldorf (from La Düsseldorf)
• La Düsseldorf: Geld (from Viva)

Animal Collective: Sung Tongs
I'm coming at Animal Collective all out of order. First Campfire Songs, then Strawberry Jam, then Feels, then Merriweather Post Pavilion. Now Sung Tongs. It's kind of a strange way to go about it. On the one hand I can piece together the evolution of the band—Feels seems like an explicit bridge between Sung Tongs and Strawberry Jam, and echoes of every record lurk somewhere in Merriweather—but on the other, some of these earlier albums don't feel like the revelation that they seem to have been for the fans of AC that have been on board longer than I have. That said, my brilliant wife is way into this album. It's her favorite next to Merriweather (which I'd bet she'd declare her favorite album of the year so far); she also loves Panda Bear's Person Pitch but runs hot and cold on Strawberry Jam and Feels—both of which I like more than the Panda Bear record. Clearly there are a number of Animal Collective debates in the PGWP household. Anyway: Sung Tongs. This is a strong record. I had complaints about portions of Feels that found the band going off on these spacey, drifting indulgences. They seemed to walk the line between genius ("Banshee Beat") and wankery ("Bees" or "Daffy Duck") like a drunk taking a DUI test. Sung Tongs sees the band more fully immersed in that sound, and for the better. Perhaps by dint of being more cohesive overall—there are no rhythm section–driven rockers like Feels' "Grass" or "Turn Into Something"—Sung Tongs becomes an album you can sink into. It can drift past you, yes, but at times that seems to be the intent. I dig this record, though I need to spend a lot more time with it. It probably wasn't wise of me to pick this up so close on the heels of Merriweather, an album so utterly different but also so much more fun.

• Animal Collective: Leaf House

Wavves: Wavvves
Wavvves doesn't really feel like a full-length album. The brief record is technically twelve tracks long, but it feels more like six or seven suites, as instrumental fragments buffer many of the more pop-oriented tracks. ("Pop-oriented" because there are melodies buried under all that distortion.) I hesitate to say they're "filler"—they're more than that, though also less than standalone works. The whole record does add up to something; there is an aesthetic at work here—a kind of raucous experimentation, unpretentious and un-self-conscious. Also, juvenile and naive. Does that mean it's good? Yeah, it's good. It's fun to listen to. I wrote about Wavves a little while back over at Do You Compute, in the context of GodheadSilo—a band who I feel is a kind of ancestor to Wavves. I don't think Wavves takes themselves (himself, I guess) very seriously, and that's okay—though it has the effect of making Wavvves good but not essential. 

• Wavves: Surf Goth

Seefeel: Quique and Starethrough EP
It's funny: ten or twelve or fifteen years ago, when labels like Kranky and Warp were releasing record after record of genius space rock (the former) and heady electronica (the latter), I was lapping all of it up like Pavlov's dog. So how or why did I skip Seefeel, whose 1993 album Quique—guitar-based electronica—was like a bridge between Bowery Electric and Aphex Twin? I heard them back then, but for whatever reason I just didn't consider them seriously. Oh well: better late than never. There's no mistaking which decade Seefeel hail from, but still, Quique holds up pretty well. Their followup EP, Starethrough, I like even more. Perhaps by dint of being shorter it has the luxury of seeming more concentrated, more distilled.

• Seefeel: Through You (from Quique)
• Seefeel: Spangle (from Starethrough)

Air France: No Way Down EP
On the other hand, Seefeel seems positively current compared to Air France, whose 2008 EP No Way Down sounds straight out of a Euro dance club circa 1992. It's a style of music I only liked in small doses back then and only like in small doses now. "Collapsing at Your Doorstep" is the highlight here—hence the track deservedly made the rounds of numerous mp3 blogs last year. The rest of the EP's quality depends on your tolerance level for airy, light techno. I personally liked their 2006 EP, On Trade Winds, a little more than No Way Down (the two are now available as a single disc, by the way), though "Collapsing" is probably the high point of either. Most of No Way Down is pleasant, but it drifts into background music whenever I put it on.

• Air France: Collapsing At Your Doorstep

That's it for the today. Come back tomorrow for some Bowie, Jorge Ben, and the rest of the rest.

My Listening Hours: The Best of January–March

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

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

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

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

• Neko Case: Middle Cyclone

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

• Andrew Bird: Oh No

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

• Animal Collective: Bluish

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

• Faust: Jennifer  

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

• Mission of Burma: Trem Two

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

• Josh Ritter: Mind's Eye

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

• Del Shannon: Little Town Flirt

RIYL MPP

Random bits and pieces of Merriweather Post Pavilion have me thinking of a few kindred sounds. None of these are direct soundalikes to what Animal Collective are doing, but I hear elements of each mixed into their stew.

• Faust: Krautrock (from Faust IV, 1973)
  This one might be a more accurate reference for Strawberry Jam than MPP; nevertheless I think Faust IV a safe recommendation to anyone who likes the last couple Animal Collective albums. The two bands feel like kindred spirits, separated by an ocean and almost four decades. Both are unpredictable, experimental, dramatic, and funny.

• Raymond Scott: Cindy Electronium (1959)

• Philip Glass: Floe (from Glassworks, 1982)
  Listen to the opening of "My Girls"—it reminds me of Glass's circular patterns (though I'm probably giving Animal Collective too much credit; "Floe" is infinitely more complex).

• Bjork, Oceania (from Medúlla, 2004)
  Between the beats and the backing vocals—Wooo!—I hear a direct connection between this song and MPP.

• Tough Alliance: 1981 (from A New Chance, 2007)
  The first time my brilliant wife heard "My Girls" she texted me: "WTF - new Animal Collective is totally Tough Alliance." There are clear surface similarities, though the Tough Alliance are obviously way more interested in teh 80s synth-pop aesthetics.

• Oskar Sala: Concertando Rubato from Elektronische Tanzsuite (1959)
  Something about the intro to "Daily Routine"—maybe it's just those first tentative, random hits of the keyboard, not to mention the tonal similarity. 

For your comparison:

• Animal Collective: Daily Routine

And the video for "My Girls":

Neu! 2

 
The feeling didn't last, but three tracks into Neu! 2, I was all set to declare it the duo’s best album. It felt like a mature evolution from the debut, and more cohesive than the split-personality third album. Opener “Für Immer” might be the best encapsulation of what people think of when they say something “sounds like Neu”: the hypnotic beat, the droning guitars, the crisp production. I halfway expected Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadler to start chanting along midway through. The song segues into “Spitzenqualitat,” with Klaus Dinger’s signature drum beat covered in echo as if it were the Jesus & Mary Chain remix. The beat gradually slows down; you get the feeling that the word “motorik” might have been coined during this very track, as it sounds literally as if the beat is powering down into sleep mode.

Speed, in the sense of revolutions per minute, seems to be the primary theme of Neu! 2. The album is most famous for its filler: the story goes that Dinger and Michael Rother had run out of money during their session, so they simply filled with second half of their album with versions of “Super” and “Neuschnee” played at various speeds. Essentially the same thing as putting a 33 record on 78, or simultaneously holding down the fast-forward and play buttons on your tape deck. The story sounds suspicious to me; after all, Neu! and Neu! 75 are each just six songs long. Why did Neu! 2 need to be twice that? Dinger and Rother must have had a better reason for the songs’ inclusion than a need for padding. Was it merely a joke on their fans? Did such manipulations feel experimental circa 1973? (They weren’t terribly: Les Paul was doing more interesting innovations with tape speeds back in the 1940s.)

This extended RPM-fiddling ultimately keeps Neu! 2 from being a wholly satisfying record. But I will grant that there is something interesting going on here. The arc of “Neuschnee 78”–“Super 16”–“Neuschnee” (the numerals indicate the RPM speed; no numeral means it’s regular speed) accomplishes with speed what Josef Albers does with color—you start to lose sense of what’s too fast, what’s too slow, and what’s normal, the same way Albers can make you think you’re looking at two different shades of red just by pairing the color with contrasting or complementary hues. The cartoonishly fast “Neuschnee 78” and the agonizingly slow “Super 16” knock your ears out of whack; when the unmanipulated “Neuschnee” begins, it too sounds “wrong.” Your perception of standard speed becomes so warped that everything feels off. The same happens again with “Casetto,” which sounds like a warped record dialed down to 16 RPMs, punctuated with sudden stops and restarts before jumping at last into the hyperspeed “Super 78” and slowing down again with “Hallo Excentrico.” By the time of album closer “Super”—a track you’ve already heard twice by now, once too fast and once too slow—it just sounds… weird.

So it’s an interesting experiment. But it’s not very fun to listen to straight through more than once or twice. Better to trim it to seven tracks (I admit I like the strange “Cassetto,” speed be damned):

• Für Immer
• Spitzenqualitat
• Gedenkminute
• Lila Engel
• Neuschnee
• Cassetto
• Super

Amon Düül II: Phallus Dei

One thing about krautrock: so many of these bands were dark, hypnotic, experimental, epic—and also full of humor. Faust, Neu!, and Amon Düül II all regularly featured total goofball vocals or musical interludes. The unfortunate thing is that really Faust was the only band that could pull it off consistently. Neu! was successful about half the time, and Amon Düül II essentially ruined every single song in which they tried to inject anything resembling levity. That was my main complaint when I first heard them last year, picking up their second album, Yeti. That album had enough mindblowing moments—“Burning Sister,” “Eye Shaking King,” among others—that further investigation into the band’s discography felt necessary, despite the faux-operatic vocals sullying tracks like “Gulp a Sonata.” So a month or two back I picked up their 1969 debut (not counting the original Amon Düül material), Phallus Dei.

Unfortunately the record suffers from the same inconsistency as Yeti, only even more so.
When ADII stays dark—and instrumental—they often touch brilliance (like on opener “Kanaan”). Add vocals, though, and ADII quickly becomes a nearly unlistenable joke (like on track two, “Dem Guten, Schönen, Wahren,” in which the vocalist alternates between feigning like a frightened old woman and a scarrrrrry vampire). The third track, “Luzifers Ghilom,” as well as the epic title track, come close to letting the genius instrumental jams transcend the occasional vocal intrusions.

Yeti, though not perfect, is a more satisfying album. Of the five songs on Phallus Dei, only the odd-numbered tracks are really worthwhile. (And what’s with the two bonus tracks that accompany the 2006 reissue of this album? They don’t even sound like they were recorded in the same decade, in the same country, or by the same band. Truly awful.) Someone out there clue me in: should I keep pursuing more ADII material? Tanz der Lemminge? Carnival in Babylon? Wolf City?

• Amon Düül II: Luzifers Ghilom

My Listening Year: Blind Spot Edition

In 2007 my blind spot interests were fairly monogamous: my love of the Byrds morphed into a fascination with the Laurel Canyon scene, opening basically into a lot of 60s and 70s folk and rock. (Also, Elvis Costello.) That interest continued in 2008, though moving into a more country-rock direction—the Lovin' Spoonful's Anthology, for instance, was on of my favorite records of the year. I didn't listen to it a lot on its own, but nearly every track made its way into one iTunes playlist or another. I need to start picking up their proper full lengths.

• The Lovin' Spoonful: Me About You

Unlike last year, however, my interests diverged in a few directions in 2008. I started moving toward more experimental and/or less pop music: I resparked my interest in krautrock, finallybegan dipping my toes into contemporary composers, and enjoyed one or two more psychedelic albums. Toward the end of the year, mostly inspired by Michael Azerrad's book Our Band Could Be Your Life, I also filled in a few blanks from punk and early indie bands. (Also, Elvis Costello.)

I didn't have any major obsession-sparking experiences with my purchases this year, the way I did with Big Star's #1 Record and Elvis's Imperial Bedroom. Still, there were pleny of great finds. I finally filled in the gaping blind spot that was Brian Eno. Another Green World was partly what I expected and partly a total surprise--highlighting, if nothing else, how clueless I actually was about why Eno is so great. I knew he was an ambient pioneer, but I sorely underestimated him as a pop auteur. This was reinforced when I picked up Before and After Science, which sounds like a proto-Talking Heads record.

• Brian Eno: I'll Come Running (from Another Green World)

My understanding of krautrock, previously defined mostly by Can, one or two Neu! songs, and the vague "motorik" sense of the word as it applies to bands of the last decade, also came in for reconsideration. Neu!'s warm but desolate electronics, Amon Duul II's ramshod improv, and—best of all—Faust's brilliant deconstruction of rock have me eager to find more, to really get deeper inside this genre.

• Faust: It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl (from So Far)

Part of that journey through krautrock led me to the Monks, who really aren't remotely kraut; they're garage, or proto-punk. Black Monk Time easily ranks as one of my favorite purchases of the year.

• Monks: Complications

One of my prized acquisitions of the year the United States of America's sole album, from 1968—an early example of rock incorporating electronica elements such as tape splicing and other studio-as-instrument techniques. Absolutely worth seeking out.

• The United States of America: The American Metaphysical Circus

It wasn't all experimental shit for me in 08, though. Les Paul & Mary Ford's Best of the Capitol Masters has fully ingratiated itself into numerous playlists in my iTunes. I have a soft spot for music from the 40s and 50s that evokes a real sense of G-rated optimism; Les Paul & Mary Ford fit right in alongside my Doris Day and Fred Astaire albums.

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

I also continued to fill in holes for artists I've been developing a listening relationship with over the last couple of years: two albums each by Elvis Costello (Armed Forces and Get Happy!!), Neil Young (Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and Rust Never Sleeps), and David Bowie. The Bowies I picked up weren't too hot (the dreadful Young Americans and the good but not mindblowing Station to Station), but Costello and Young both were predictably terrific. 2009 will likely see more purchases of albums by all three of these guys, including albums that I know are among their best but which I've still never heard.

• Elvis Costello: Oliver's Army (from Armed Forces)

At the tail end of the year I went headlong into a punk and classic indie rock spell, picking up a bunch of never-heards by the Minutemen, Mission of Burma, and Buzzcocks along with a bunch of re-buys, returning to albums I sold many years ago on some destitute afternoon trying to pay rent and eat a burrito while I was in college. Mission of Burma is great—I've got Vs. on hold for a future eMusic purchase. And the Buzzcocks—one of those bands, like the Lovin' Spoonful, who I realize I've heard many times over the course of my life but never understood "this is the Buzzcocks." I was expecting something a little more snarly, a little more Sex Pistolsy, but I was pleased to find an album full of pop songs about love (okay, and also orgasms).

• Buzzcocks: Ever Fallen In Love?

Later today, my real favorite album of the year. Tomorrow, my official "top ten new-to-me albums discovered in 2008"—which will somehow manage to include still more albums I haven't even touched on this week so far.

Faust: Faust and Faust So Far

My journey deeper into krautrock continues, after recent purchases by Neu! and Amon Düül II, with the first two Faust albums. I've had them for a few weeks now and have been listening to both pretty religiously; in fact, I'd say these are my favorite kraut acquisitions of the year by far—not as cold as Neu!, not as aimless as ADII.

For the longest time I was put off by Faust, mostly because of their album covers and their band name, both of which radiate a kind of proto-goth/industrial vibe. Once again I was guilty of imagining what a band must sound like, only to find I was completely wrong. The music on these two records blends psychedelia, kraut, avant-garde tape-splicing, even hints of proto-punk at times. The tone of the records also slides from dark atmospherics to outright humor, each balancing out the other so as never to go over either edge.

In my Amon Düül post linked above I wondered how ADII could even be considered to be part of the same genre as a band like Can: Faust is the bridge. Just play Faust and So Far back to back and hear the former's closer, the sprawling spaceout "Miss Fortune," segue into the stripped-bare propulsion of "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl." The evolution of Faust's sound from one record to the next might be seen as a microcosm of how at least some of their peers related to each other.

Faust is comprised of just three tracks (nine minutes, eight minutes, and sixteen minutes in length), each an amalgamation of many other fragments spliced together. The effect is something abstract, freeform, yet never without intent—there is an underlying compositional structure to the whole record (unlike ADII's improvisations). Opener "Why Don't You Eat Carrots" is abstract with elements of humor—some of the circuslike sounds remind me of the United States of America's self-titled album, released a couple years earlier. Elsewhere, the harmonized spoken/shouted lyrics at the core of "Meadow Meal," and the short, politically charged spoken outro of "Miss Fortune" remind me of Gang of Four's vocal approach in their classic "Anthrax." "Meadow Meal" is the real highlight of the first record. I was listening to both albums on shuffle along with a few other albums I'm into right now, and the song came on just after something from the Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat. I felt the ancestral roots linking the two bands in their stitched-together aesthetics (though the Fiery Furnaces also have a maximalist math-rock thing going on as well... not Faustian).

It says something—about Faust or about my own taste, I don't know—that the vocal section of "Meadow Meal" is the best part of the record. It's the most structured section of the entire album, holding down what could otherwise feel meandering. With So Far, the band seemed to have learned that lesson and presented a batch of songs far more balanced. "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" is practically a pop song compared to everything they'd done prior—but it's also a kind of commentary on pop music of the era. The singers, in a loose harmony, intone the title lyric, an overtly cliche 60s pop image, juxtaposed with an otherwise anti-pop structure. The song is built around a simple 4/4 tom beat, joined incrementally by piano and guitar, each pounding out just a single chord. The song marches linearly—no chorus, no ringing guitars, no layered SoCal  harmonies—until a wonderful sax solo hooks the ear right at the end, before the whole thing fades out.

The whole album is an exercise in balancing pop with anti-pop, structure with atmospherics. The ten-minute "No Harm" is all meandering atmosphere before coalescing into a barely contained nonsensical rocker—"Daddy! Take the banana! Tomorrow is Sunday!" The title track is a tightly wound, conservative-by-comparison instrumental, prodded along by a clockwork two-note horn riff, followed by the heady "Mamie is Blue," with its cult-like chants. "I've Got My Car and My TV" is almost like two or three Saturday morning cartoon theme songs spliced together; the bouncy, hypnotic riff taking up the second half of the song is the biggest earworm of the record.

• Faust: Meadow Meal (from Faust)
• Faust: It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl (from So Far)

A Cluster of Impressions

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.

• The Fiery Furnaces, Clear Signal from Cairo

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."

• Neu!, 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.

• Neutral Milk Hotel, The King of Carrot Flowers, pt. 1

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?

My listening Hours: The Rest of July–September

So we come to "the rest." These are albums that aren't bad; in fact many of them are quite good. They just, for whatever reason, didn't force their way into that part of my brain that compelled me play them over and over and over. Nevertheless I still recommend everything here. Sometimes the albums in this category are slow burners, either melting into a bunch of my playlists or just consistently sneaking their way into rotation.

The Flatlanders, More a Legend Than a Band
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, 100 Days, 100 Nights
Perfect example of albums that I don't really crave in full but am still ingesting song by song through playlists and shuffles: the Flatlanders and Sharon Jones. Back in July I placed both in the "best" category; I haven't changed my feeling on the quality of the albums, but I will admit that their sameness makes me less inclined to keep putting them on. Each album contains maybe four songs that are really, utterly fantastic, and a lot of other songs that are good, solid, but less identifiable.

• The Flatlanders, Keeper of the Mountain
• Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, When the Other Foot Drops, Uncle

R.E.M., Reckoning
Neil Young, Rust Never Sleeps
Likewise, here are two records that are great, but I find myself listening to them more when I just put on my "Everything by R.E.M." or "Everything by Neil Young" mixes. Until July, Reckoning had the distinction of being the only R.E.M. album I'd yet to hear in full, from beginning to end, despite knowing most of the songs from isolated circumstances and despite R.E.M. being among my favorite bands of all time. I have to admit that I had assumptions about how I'd feel about the record, based in part on how I felt about Murmur and Fables of the Reconstruction; that is, I'm less of a fan of the early stuff, mostly due to how it's produced and how willfully muddled the records are. (That's not to say I don't like it... I just have a pretty firm personal perspective on the band.)

Rust Never Sleeps also boasts/suffers from intentionally poor production: it was recorded as a live album, with the audience subsequently pulled out of the mix. Additionally, the first half of the record is Neil and his acoustic guitar, and the second half Neil and Crazy Horse rocking out. The first half fares a lot better; not only are the songs better, but they handle the production limitations better too. The rockers just aren't that enjoyable to listen to, especially in comparison with the clarity of the epic jams of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, which I can't help but compare it to since I bought that one fairly recently too.

• R.E.M., (Don't Go Back to) Rockville
• Neil Young, Pocahontas

Amon Düül II, Yeti
Neu!, s/t
Like I said on Monday, I'm having a krautrock moment. And I think I'm especially having a krautrock moment because Amon Düül II was so unlike what I expected. There's nothing "motorik" about them; I don't think it would even occur to me to put them in the same genre as Neu! or Can if I were taking the Pepsi Challenge. While not entirely without structure, Yeti is very freeform, and not really influenced by minimalism at all, in the way those other bands are. It's much closer in spirit to psychedelia than what I previously understood krautrock to be. And that's a good thing: it makes me want to seek out more of their records, to hear a few more Can records which I've never gotten to, to finally pick up some Faust (which I just did, yesterday), La Dusseldorf, Harmonia, Cluster, and others. That's not to say that Yeti is a perfect album, though. At nearly seventy minutes, it loses all focus in the last third, mostly due to the eighteen-minute title track, an improvised jam with occasional howling vocals. Like any improvised exercise by any band with aspirations toward the epic, the song flits between genius and tedium. More reined-in songs, like "Eye Shaking King," are wonderful, though.

Neu!, meanwhile, are the other end of the spectrum. Crisp, spacious, repetitive. I bought Neu! 75 a few months ago—and I liked it—but I like this more. I long had an impression of what Neu! was supposed to sound like, and Neu! 75 wasn't really it; this is. Neu! 2 is on my immediate horizon.

• Amon Düül II, Eye Shaking King
• Neu!, Weissensee

Okkervil River, Black Sheep Boy
By now, I've exhausted myself as far as writing about Okkervil River goes. Newsflash: I like this band. Double-newsflash: I like the slow songs less than the fast songs. News analysis: The ratio of slow songs to fast songs on Black Sheep Boy (and the Appendix) is lower than on the later two albums, therefore I enjoy this one somewhat less. That said, "Black" may be the best song the band has ever done. Top two or three, at least.

• Okkervil River, Black

Spoon, Girls Can Tell
Girls Can Tell was one of two Spoon albums I'd yet to pick up (the other is the recent Telephono reissue). I've heard others describe this as the acme of the band's output. It's a great record, but either it hasn't sunk in enough with me or I've just heard too many other Spoon albums prior to this one for it to feel revelatory. Me, I'll take Kill the Moonlight and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga before this one. Of course, when you're talking Spoon, "better" and "worse" is all a matter of degree. These guys are like peanut butter to me—I'll take 'em any way you wanna give 'em to me; I know they'll be good.

• Spoon, The Fitted Shirt

Air France, On Trade Winds
Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, Nancy & Lee
Both of these albums, while good, pretty much slipped right past me. I devoted very little time to listening to them, though when I did put them on I enjoyed them. Hey, you pick up the equivalent of a new album every three days, some of those albums are going to get lost in the shuffle. On Trade Winds is just four songs, adding up to less than half an hour; every time I put it on it was over before I started paying attention. I had a few songs from Nancy & Lee via Nancy's greatest hits album and a few stray downloads; from those I was expecting something a little darker—"Some Velvet Morning," for instance, is so creepy good—but a lot of the record is kinda goofy. That's not a bad thing, just not what I was expecting. I think the fact that it didn't match up to what I was expecting explains at least in part why I was less inclined to put it on. It is a good album, though, for what it is.

• Air France, Beach Party
• Nancy & Lee, Some Velvet Morning

Later today: the disappointments.