Summer Summer Summertime! Time to throw some meat on the grill, crack some beers and (if you’re in my neck of the woods) hope it stops fucking raining before August. Here’s a mix I put together that is perfect for just those times, featuring Tommy Keene, Sugar, Stars, Velocity Girl, The Times, Sloan, Gorillaz, Portastatic, The Pipettes and many others!
OK, we've cruised through the pop half of my faves of 2010 mix-tape, now let's move on to my usual rock n' roll stomping grounds. There were a good amount of rock records I loved this year, most coming from old favorites That's good, because I love seeing bands I enjoy keep moving forward, but also unfortunate as there just aren't a lot of new bands out there that doing it for me. Let's go to the list.
1. The Like - He's Not A Boy from Release Me: Just a charming single from this all-girl band. Pumping out a sound that wouldn't sound out of place in some late-50's biker movie, this song is pure nostalgia for garage rock. It's just plain charming. While the album that followed later in the Summer was good, it doesn't come close to the heights that its lead single achieved.
2. Jason and The Scorchers - Mona Lee from Halcyon Times: Jason and The Scorchers is a band that I've sadly slept on for far too many years. I've read nothing but fantastic write-ups about them for years, and even enjoyed Jason Ringenberg's children's album, A Day At The Farm With Farmer Jason with my kids, but I just never took the plunge. Finally, after an enthusiastic e-mail from this guy, I bought their newest reunion record Halcyon Times and it's just fantastic. Full of barnstorming rockabilly, it's absolutely irresistible. This is just one of the many fantastic songs off of a fantastic album.
3. Teenage Fanclub - Baby Lee off Shadows: Another older band that is still putting out vital music. First pushed as the "next bog thing" during the first Brit-pop wave of the 90's, Teenage Fanclub has carved out a pretty great career putting out 60's style garage rock that is utterly infectious. I can't recommend picking up their new album enough (and it's only $5 this month here as added incentive).
4. Best Coast - Crazy For You off Crazy For You: Just pure breezy summer pop music. Can't say too much about it, but this is the type of music that immediately puts in mind sitting on the beach with an umbrella drink in hand.
5. Superchunk - Learn To Surf from Majesty Shredding: Speaking of both beaches and old bands still pushing out vital music, Superchunk came back after close to a decade off and put on two blistering shows in Chicago this year and put out one of my top three or four albums from them. Though they've harnessed a few of their rougher edges, they've done it by mastering a tunefulness that is undeniable. I love this band, I love this album and I love this song.
6. Stars - Wasted Daylight from The Five Ghosts: I really think I'm the only person who absolutely adored this album, but there it is. A bit of a departure from their previous albums, The Five Ghosts kind of felt like Stars was pushing all-in to break big, but I really liked what they did with their sound. Between this song and We Don't Want Your Body (the best Michael Jackson song he never sang), they made some fantastic music to dance to, and I really liked it.
7. Spoiler Alert! - Booster Gold from Spoiler Alert! EP: Art Brut frontman Eddies Argos took 2010 "off" from that band in order to head up no less than three side projects. Everybody Was In The French Resistance...Now!, a band that makes songs that answer famous pop songs; Glam Chops, a band that renders covers of pop songs as glam rock songs and Spoiler Alert!, a band that, in theory, for legal reasons, Argos has nothing to do with, but that sings songs exclusively about DC Comics superheroes. This song, explaining why Booster Gold is the "greatest hero that you've never heard of" is just amazingly charming and warms this old Booster Gold fan's heart. Which reminds me, I really need to pick up this t-shirt.
So that's it for my mix-tape for the year, I really do suggest putting it together as a playlist, it works rather well together (or *cough* contacting the author for assistance if need be). Finally, let's hit up some honorable mentions for the year.
New Pornographers - Together and Ted Leo + Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks: While neither of these efforts from favorite bands were as ground shaking as some of their previous releases, they were still damn solid and damn solid out of either of these two is better than 80% of the rest of the music I own.
Adam WarRock - West Coast Avengers Mixtape: Speaking of love for 80's superheroes, 2010 was a banner year for this old man, if only I could send this back in time to me in 2985, I'd be one cool-ass 11 year-old, let me tell you. FYI, if you want to check this out, it's available free thanks to the fine folks at Comics Alliance. Also, WarRock's website features over 50 other free tracks that are really damn good.
Chromeo - Business Casual and Girl Talk - All Day: You wanna dance some more? Here you go. (All day is free as well, just hit the link.)
Let's see if I can keep this thing going and come back to you about comics tomorrow.
2010 was a pretty great year for music, personally, I probably purchased more albums this year than at any time since the 90's. While I generally hate writing about music, let's go through my favorite new songs from the pasty year, the order is unimportatn, other than the fact they make a nice playlist this way.
1. Adam WarRock - The Silver Age (f/ Tribe One) from The War For Infinity: It's tough for someone to rap about comics oriented stuff and avoid getting labeled something with a derisive "nerd" attached to it. Eugene Ahn avoids this deftly with the single off his excellent concept album, re-purposing Marvel's The Infinity Gauntlet to a world where the dispute was not settled with fisticuffs but rap battles. The single, though it is separate from the album's story helps to inform the foundation on which it was built.
2. Gorillaz - On Melancholy Hill from Plastic Beach: It's tough to pick one track from Plastic Beach because it is truly a complete album, one that has a form of sonic cohesion that's rare in pop music today. I tdo realize there is an overarching story line to the album (and indeed all of Gorillaz work), but I can't make heads of tails of it without viewing their (fantastic) videos as an accompaniment. This is easily my favorite album of the year.
3. Kanye West - Runaway from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: To paraphrase Aziz Ansari's description for someone else, Kanye West is an brilliant rapper/crazy person. While his latest is not my favorite of his releases, Runaway is a pretty undeniable single. My only wish is that it had come out in the Summer, since this is windows down on a hot day music if there ever was any.
4. Passion Pit - Little Secrets from Manners: Speaking of Summer music, this song is it to a "T". While the album it comes from is certainly good, this is one of those singles that just stands above the crowd. Not too much else to say.
5. Daft Punk - Derezzed from Tron: Legacy OST: While I would have prferred a "proper" Daft Punk album this year, their rollicking soundtrack to the Tron sequel fits the bill quite nicely.
6. Robyn - Dancing On My Own from Body Talk: this year I really came around on pop music, and robyn's Body talk EP's (now collected into on fantastic album) really were the final nail in the coffin. The fact that Lady Gaga gets as much press as she does for doing so much recycling and wearing meat dresses while Robyn simply makes great music in the trenches and is ignored by the mainstream is pretty depressing. Regardless, there is great pop music out there and that's a great thing.
7. Cee-Lo Green - Fuck You from The Lady Killer: It's easy to write this song off as being cheap, "hur hur he says 'fuck' a lot" but, damn, this is a fine ass song. That it's gotten several conservative commenters upset that someone other than Dick Cheney is using the f-word only makes it sweeter.
So that wraps up the first half of what I loved this year, tomorrow I'll come back with part 2 and the more rock-oriented half of the list.
I saw a fair amount of live music shows in 2009, but without a doubt one of my favorites was seeing a cover band. Tributosaurus is a Chicago collective that, once a month, picks a band and performs one show "as" that band, playing pitch-perfect renditions of their songs, obtaining all of the necessary musicians and instruments required. Though I've only seen them once so far, I got to see them "be" one of my absolute favorites, XTC. Which is nice, because we're not likely to see XTC ever tour, should they ever choose to reform, that is. Here's a infomercial they did to promote it:
They started of with a version of Life Begins at the Hop that blew the doors off, cycling through multiple vocalists and musicians in order to get every song exactly right, and they did.
It was a great night, both from my overwhelming familiarity with the music and with the fact that they played it so well. I can't wait to see them in just over a week when they play a New Year's Eve show "as" Tom Petty. I'm sure it'll be a fantastic evening.
Sorry, on a business trip this week, so I'm kind of out of sorts but here's an album that I love so very much from this year and it's great and you should get it*. Mayer Hawthorne's A Strange Arrangement is as fine an R&B record as I have heard this year and it is the JAM.
Ho ho ho folks, as it is the happiest season of the year (for some of us at least), I figured it's once again time to share some of my favorite things from the past year (and just the past). Anyway, let's start off light, though seasonally appropriate. though the idea of a Bob Dylan Christmas album sounds odd, I've found myself enjoying it quite a bit. I think the video for "Must Be Santa" sums it up quote weel, though Bob looks like he's auditioning for the role of the Mad hatter in a Holiday-themed version of Alice in Wonderland, it works within the rather mad-cap feel of both the video and the song.
So I hope you all are starting to emege from your post-Thanksgiving food-coma and are starting to get into the mood. Look forward to sharing a lot more over the coming days.
Sorry for the lack of bloggery lately, but Summer's seemingly just moved into full swing. Anyway, going to see The Decemberists tonight at The Metro, and am suitably stoked. Picked up their newest album, The Hazards of Love and am enjoying it quite a bit. Os a complete album, it holds together much better than The Crane Wife (which I liked quite a bit).
So after I've talked about their last two albums, here's a track from their album before that, Picaresque, just because I love the video so much, with it's Rushmore meets The Daily Show conceit.
While I promise to bang my thoughts about Pitchfork Music Fest into some kind of post before the week is out, I figured I'd throw some songs at you. Usually when I'm leaving work for the day, I need something to play in the car to wake me up from a day of staring at a computer and trying not to put my fist through it, so here's five quick tunes that help me work the funk out.
1901, Phoenix's newest album is easily my favorite new music of the summer. Very reminiscent of Cut Copy's brand of indie-dance-pop, the whole album gets you wanting to jump up and down, but nothing is better than this, the lead track.
Though, I'll be honest, Art Brut's newest album is probably my least favorite of their albums so far, it's still damn good. This song, Eddie Argos sings about two of his favorite things in life, which also happen to be some of mine as well.
It's pretty safe to say that The Clash are my favorite band, so it's pretty easy for them to make this list. Nothing like singing this one at the top of your lungs with the windows open.
I know, I know, I've evangelized about these ladies many, many times before, but I'm just going to tell you, this is great music and if you don't like it you're dead to me. Well, not really, but let me be dramatic just this one, k?
Recently loaded Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend up on my work iTunes and damn if that isn't a perfect album. One of the few records I've listened to a million times in the past 18 years, and I still love it as much as the day I got it. And this is probably my favorite song.
So go get in your car, turn it up and have some fun people!
If you grew up in the 80's, and love good pop music, you probably have a mixed thoughts about Michael Jackson. On one hand, he was responsible for some of the most amazing and inventive music of our generation. On the other hand, he was widely suspected of committing some of the worst crimes you can think of.
Let's deal with the first one first. I don't know how you explain it to people who weren't around when he exploded onto the national consciousness with his performance of Billie Jean on the Motown 25 special back in 1983. Off The Wall had already been released and was a huge hit, but Thriller, and that performance in particular, turned him into the type of superstar that hadn't been seen since The Beatles, and has not been seen since (and most likely probably never will). Everyone was a Michael Jackson fan, when the Thriller music video was release on VHS (when I was nine), they actually took all of us out of class so we could all watch it at school. How did that happen? I have no idea, I just know I was caught along with it. I wanted a sparkly glove, just like Michael! So did everyone I know, and probably everyone you know that was conscious during that time.
But once that superstardom faded away, we were left with the music. Two perfect albums (and one that was pretty damn great), I still have my battered vinyl copies of all three of those (though only one is the original one that my Brother bought at Musicland at Orland Mall) and I'll be honest, I've really wanted to upgrade and get some nice CD's of all of them. And that's where the second part of Michael Jackson's legacy comes in. He was one weird motherfucker, and there was no denying it, really there wasn't a damn thing you couldn't accuse him of that you couldn't see being true, so when the pedophile allegations came out, no one had trouble believing it, and that's why I just couldn't drop any cash that could find its way into his pockets, much like the difficulties I have with other troubled pop genius/bat-shit crazy mofo Phil Spector.
So what am I trying to say here? Hell if I know, but it sucks that Michael Jackson didn't make more great music, and it sucks that his own ego/fucked up up-bringing/crazy-asssedness got in the way of that. But we still have the great music did make, and maybe his death will allow us to appreciate that a little bit more.
I've had this blog post sitting in my drafts for a few days, unfortunately, I hate blogging about music, since it's something I have a hard time putting into words, more so for things that I really like. Anyway, it all started when Johnny Bacardi, Matt Springer and I were discussing Jay Bennett's solo work, something I had been pretty unaware of until the last week or so. Then, yesterday I started to see some rumors on twitter, and finally last night I saw my fears were verified on Jim Derogatis's blog. Jay Bennett was dead at age 45.
I was a big fan of Wilco back in the mid-to-late 90's. I saw them a bunch of times (living in their home-town and all) and Summerteethand the first Mermaid Avenue album rate pretty high on my desert island discs list. However, after the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot fiasco, they fell into the same hole that Radiohead fell into for me. While the ponderous, experimental music both bands have been creating after their popularity peeked may be more artistically rewarding for them, but I much preferred when both bands rocked. Since then, I've kind of listened to each new release with less and less interest.
After our conversations, I picked up Jay Bennett & Edward Burch's The Palace at 4AM (Part 1), used off of amazon (as it looks to be out of print)*, as Bennett's time with the band coincided with the peak of my interest and I was justly rewarded. It's kind of funny that I was completely unaware that Bennett was even releasing solo music, considering that this disc is 7 years old. The album itself is just great. Heavy on Brian-Wilsonesque orchestration and lyrics that I find very similar to Elvis Costello's (it helps that some of the vocals sound like him too). It's pretty much a perfect album to throw on while sitting outside this summer, enjoying a frosty beverage. Here are two of my favorite tracks, first up is one of the more Costello-ish cuts:
Obviously, it's pretty terrible that Bennett passed away, from what I've read, he's had a pretty tough go of it the last few years, but things were starting to look up. I look forward to getting into more of his catalog, but I'll feel bad that I won't get a chance to see him live.
*Looks like most of his stuff is available on eMusic (with a few tracks unavailable) and they're also up on Amazon for pretty cheap (though that may change). Also, his most recently released album, Whatever Happened, I Apologize is currently available for free download.
This is one of those shows that I was excited for as much for hte band, as I was for the venue, the Church of the Epiphany in the West Loop, but alas, they've been forced to move the show to the Logan Square Auditorium, but I'm still stoked, none the less. Hitchcock is an artist I've been a fan of ever sine "So You Think You're In Love" was playing on 120 minutes back in the early 90's, but I've never made it out to see him, and from what I hear, his shows with the Venus 3 (featuring R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, amongst others) are barn-burners, so I'm sure to have a good time. Here's a song from their first album together, Ole' Tarantula:
Both Ole Tarantula ad their current album, Goodnight Oslo, are available on eMusic.
Over the next few days, an astonishing 4 close, dear friends of mine will pass from the shores of youth into the Greyhavens of the grand age of 35. Fortunately, we've all been given the ample venue for this celebration of their passing into agedness, Tributosaurs, a Chicago collective that puts on monthly shows "as" other musicians, is putting on a show as long-time favorite XTC.
XTC has been a favorite of mine for years, so long that I can't really even pin-point when I started enjoying their music, though I do remember stealing my brother's cassette tape of Mummer way back in the day. Regardless, I've been a fan for just about as long as I knew what type of music that I actually liked and it's nice that I'll finally get to see their music played live, even if not by them. Though they're not exactly a going concern anymore, even if they were still putting out new music, I doubt we'd be seeing them anytime soon. Though it's long been rumored that extreme stage fright keeps lead-singer-songwriter Andy Partridge* off the stage, I think it's because he just doesn't like doing it that much.
Anyhoo, the music itself is pretty much just pitch-perfect witty pop. I really hate writing about music because any effort I put into describing it just comes out sounding lame, so here's the Avengers-inspired video for The Mayor of Simpleton:
If you like what you hear, and you haven't yet been exposed to their majesty, I'd highly recommend picking up their Greatest Hits comp, Upsy Daisy Assortment**, really, in lieu of owning all of their releases, that's an album no collection should be without.
Anyway, needless to say, I'm going to be having a good time tonight, hope you are too.
*Incidentally, Andy Partridge also wrote and performed my all-time favorite TV theme-song for the woefully under appreciatedWonderfalls, I can't find the opening on youtube, but here's a link to the song itself.
**Which is apparently out of print, so you could do worse than to pick up the slightly more expensive, yet also more comprehensive Fossil Fuel singles collection. If you're looking for a single disc, grab Oranges & Lemons, still very good stuff there.
It's Saturday morning, and since it looks like it's going to be a pretty nice day here in the Chicago-land area, I figured I'd start it out with a song. Some friends and I were discussing this article at the AV Club regarding what bands you'd like to see one more time, and I started getting nostalgic for my college days and the music that we would listen to over and over again. And fortunately, it just so happens that Thursday night I had downloaded a new album that sounds exactly like the sort of stuff I would have played over and over back in those days. Well, not just in those days, since I've been listening to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart's self-titled album pretty much constantly and enjoying quite a bit. It's just the perfect type of fuzzy pop magic that I loved then, and I love it now. Here's an appropriate song for the day of the week:
So, if you pay attention to the little do-dad I have in the sidebar over to your right, you'll notice that I've been listening to A.C. Newman's new album Get Guilty pretty much non-stop lately. Newman's best known for being the ringleader of the "Supergroup" The New Pornographers, who are probably one of my favorite active bands. Though I've generally enjoyed his song-writing and singing for that band, I was left a tad cold by his first solo effort, it just felt (for lack of a better term) thin. However his new record is a lot more like his work with the 'Pornos, more orchestrated with much more complicated arrangements. However, it's just not as lush as the Pornographers stuff. That's not a criticism, it gives the work a certain, almost lo-fi charm, as if it was all hashed out in his garage (though it's obiously very produced). Essentially it feels like a New Pornographers' record, minus the influence of his collaborators in that band (Dan Bejar, Neko Case, Todd Fancey, etc.) and it comes out very well.
Anway, since I'm kinda crap at talking about music, here's one of my favorite tracks:
I went to college from 92-96 and after graduation spent 6 months in London at an internship, so I was right in the wheel-house to enjoy the Bit-Pop experience, and I did. The music for the most part was very, very good and drama involved was amusing, especially because I never really cared about a lot of the personalities involved. Who cares if Blur & Oasis hated each other and were constantly playing little one-upsmanship games on the charts and in the press. I liked both of their music, so I didn't care to choose sides, aren't rock/pop stars supposed to be assholes anyway? They certainly thought so. And as for Richie Manic, well, I never really thought their stuff was much to write home about so, his disappearance certainly had no effect upon me.
ANYWAY, to the review at hand. Phonogram is essentially an " alternate world" take on the after-effects of brit-pop. In the world of the book, music is magic and in England, brit-pop was quite the revolution. David Kohl is our hero, or at least protagonist, since he's quite a dick. He's one of the last phonomancer's (ie. magicians) whose being is tied to brit-pop. After wandering into the wrong club he's forced into looking into what's going on with Britannia, the dead goddess of brit-pop. It seems someone's fucking around with her and it's up to him to see what the heck is going on. It's in his best interest since his "aspect" is still tied to hers, so if she is changed, so will his entire personality (as noted by his growing enjoyment of late-period-crap brit-pop bands).
The book reads pretty much like a music centered arc of Hellblazer, and after thinking about it, David Kohl isn't far from John Constantine in character traits. He's the asshole hero who is still wracked with guilt about all of the people he's fucked over (but he still keeps fucking people over because it's his nature) and while doing a job, he realizes that he's not quite as big of a dick as he thought. The only thing missing was him shooting the audience the finger over his shoulder in the last panel (and let's face it, if they'd done that in the Constantine movie, we'd all have liked it a lot better).
Overall, it's very well-written and though you don't have to know the music to enjoy it, the kibble for brit-pop lovers out there is very nice.
A few last things about the trade collection of this series. First, they do provide a fun reference section in the back, giving info about each of the bands referenced and what some of the references in the book are, it also displays the jaundiced opinions of the authors, which are quite funny. Lastly, unfortunately, they did not reprint the original covers in color, as they were really cool. Each one was an homage to a brit-pop record. Here's my favorite:
I realize that Black Grape really wasn't that good, but they played an incredible show at the Metro my senior year in college and that first album always takes me back.
Recommended Related Reading/Listening/Watching:
The Brit Box: This just announced box from Rhino sounds really good. It pretty much gives you the history of brit-pop from it's rise out of Shoegazing to its inglorious end at the hands of Northern Uproar and Kula Shaker. Yes, there are some omissions and they do include some of the unfortunate later bands, but if you're going to tell the history, you need the good with the bad. I'll be picking it up as I have a quasi-OCD love of greatest hits packages and compilations anyway.
24 Hour Party People: Though this movie isn't about brit-pop per se (it documents the Madchester scene of the 80's), it is crucial for understanding a lot of the insanity that was British music in the late-20th century. That, and it's a hell of a lot of fun.
Britpop - Live Forever: I had already gone over this BBC America documentary on Brit-pop here, but I felt I needed to mention it again. Though it is very self-important (but so was all of brit-pop), it's a very interesting document of the period and there's a lot of cool videos excerpted and will make you run to YouTube to relive the past.
Phongram #1: The first issue is available on-line at Image Comics's web site. Check it out!
So yeah, I'm going to see The Pipettes tonight and I'm freaking ecstatic. Their perfectly written and executed pop music cuts right through my rough, indie-rock exterior to my true, sappy core. The fact that they're smokin' and English is pure gravy.
I was able to pick up their album on e-music last year, but since they've signed with Interscope in the US, anyone who missed out will have to wait until their album physically drops in July or August. To tide people over, the Your Kisses are Wasted on Me EP just came out and it's very nice. Here's some B-Side action:
Hey all, a large contingent of my friends will be attending this Saturday's Ted Leo & the Pharmacists show at the Metro. I'm stuck at home with the boys, unfortuantely, so hopefully it'll be a good time none-the-less. Here's a little bit of what the rest of us are missing:
So I'm watching this Britpop documentary on BBC America, and they show a snippet of this video which I had thus far never seen.
I immediately jumped on the 'tube and took a look at the full thing and I was struck with some thoughts:
What a perfect, perfect pop song.
What an ugly, ugly band.
I will be listening to a lot of Supergrass this week.
Incidentally, the doc (which is called Britpop: Live Forever) is OK, but a little too self-important. They tried comparing Britpop to Grunge in that they were both major music revolutions. However, Grunge pretty much conquered the US and England and Europe, while Britpop was pretty much confined to their side of the Atlantic. Mind you, I MUCH prefer Britpop, but hey, you gotta tell it how it is (or was).
[Update: Incidentally, the track is Allright by Supergrass, if you are unfamiliar, go out and get their excellent Best of album as a primer.]
: Just a charming single from this all-girl band. Pumping out a sound that wouldn't sound out of place in some late-50's biker movie, this song is pure nostalgia for garage rock. It's just plain charming. While the album that followed later in the Summer was good, it doesn't come close to the heights that its lead single achieved.
: Jason and The Scorchers is a band that I've sadly slept on for far too many years. I've read nothing but fantastic write-ups about them for years, and even enjoyed Jason Ringenberg's children's album, A Day At The Farm With Farmer Jason 
with my kids, but I just never took the plunge. Finally, after an enthusiastic e-mail from this guy, I bought their newest reunion record Halcyon Times and it's just fantastic. Full of barnstorming rockabilly, it's absolutely irresistible. This is just one of the many fantastic songs off of a fantastic album. 
: Another older band that is still putting out vital music. First pushed as the "next bog thing" during the first Brit-pop wave of the 90's, Teenage Fanclub has carved out a pretty great career putting out 60's style garage rock that is utterly infectious. I can't recommend picking up their new album enough (and it's only $5 this month here as added incentive).
Just pure breezy summer pop music. Can't say too much about it, but this is the type of music that immediately puts in mind sitting on the beach with an umbrella drink in hand.
: Speaking of both beaches and old bands still pushing out vital music, Superchunk came back after close to a decade off and put on two blistering shows in Chicago this year and put out one of my top three or four albums from them. Though they've harnessed a few of their rougher edges, they've done it by mastering a tunefulness that is undeniable. I love this band, I love this album and I love this song.
: I really think I'm the only person who absolutely adored this album, but there it is. A bit of a departure from their previous albums, The Five Ghosts kind of felt like Stars was pushing all-in to break big, but I really liked what they did with their sound. Between this song and We Don't Want Your Body (the best Michael Jackson song he never sang), they made some fantastic music to dance to, and I really liked it.
and Ted Leo + Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks
: While neither of these efforts from favorite bands were as ground shaking as some of their previous releases, they were still damn solid and damn solid out of either of these two is better than 80% of the rest of the music I own.
and Girl Talk - All Day: You wanna dance some more? Here you go. (All day is free as well, just hit the link.)
- The Silver Age (f/ Tribe One) from The War For Infinity: It's tough for someone to rap about comics oriented stuff and avoid getting labeled something with a derisive "nerd" attached to it. Eugene Ahn avoids this deftly with the single off his excellent concept album, re-purposing Marvel's The Infinity Gauntlet to a world where the dispute was not settled with fisticuffs but rap battles. The single, though it is separate from the album's story helps to inform the foundation on which it was built.
I was a big fan of Wilco back in the mid-to-late 90's. I saw them a bunch of times (living in their home-town and all) and Summerteeth and the first Mermaid Avenue album rate pretty high on my desert island discs list. However, after the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot fiasco, they fell into the same hole that Radiohead fell into for me. While the ponderous, experimental music both bands have been creating after their popularity peeked may be more artistically rewarding for them, but I much preferred when both bands rocked. Since then, I've kind of listened to each new release with less and less interest.
Over the next few days, an astonishing 4 close, dear friends of mine will pass from the shores of youth into the Greyhavens of the grand age of 35. Fortunately, we've all been given the ample venue for this celebration of their passing into agedness, Tributosaurs, a Chicago collective that puts on monthly shows "as" other musicians, is putting on a show as long-time favorite XTC.
It's Saturday morning, and since it looks like it's going to be a pretty nice day here in the Chicago-land area, I figured I'd start it out with a song. Some friends and I were discussing this article at the AV Club regarding what bands you'd like to see one more time, and I started getting nostalgic for my college days and the music that we would listen to over and over again. And fortunately, it just so happens that Thursday night I had downloaded a new album that sounds exactly like the sort of stuff I would have played over and over back in those days. Well, not just in those days, since I've been listening to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart's self-titled album pretty much constantly and enjoying quite a bit. It's just the perfect type of fuzzy pop magic that I loved then, and I love it now. Here's an appropriate song for the day of the week:
So, if you pay attention to the little do-dad I have in the sidebar over to your right, you'll notice that I've been listening to A.C. Newman's new album Get Guilty pretty much non-stop lately. Newman's best known for being the ringleader of the "Supergroup" The New Pornographers, who are probably one of my favorite active bands. Though I've generally enjoyed his song-writing and singing for that band, I was left a tad cold by his first solo effort, it just felt (for lack of a better term) thin. However his new record is a lot more like his work with the 'Pornos, more orchestrated with much more complicated arrangements. However, it's just not as lush as the Pornographers stuff. That's not a criticism, it gives the work a certain, almost lo-fi charm, as if it was all hashed out in his garage (though it's obiously very produced). Essentially it feels like a New Pornographers' record, minus the influence of his collaborators in that band (Dan Bejar, Neko Case, Todd Fancey, etc.) and it comes out very well.
I went to college from 92-96 and after graduation spent 6 months in London at an internship, so I was right in the wheel-house to enjoy the Bit-Pop experience, and I did. The music for the most part was very, very good and drama involved was amusing, especially because I never really cared about a lot of the personalities involved. Who cares if Blur & Oasis hated each other and were constantly playing little one-upsmanship games on the charts and in the press. I liked both of their music, so I didn't care to choose sides, aren't rock/pop stars supposed to be assholes anyway? They certainly thought so. And as for Richie Manic, well, I never really thought their stuff was much to write home about so, his disappearance certainly had no effect upon me.
So yeah, I'm going to see The Pipettes tonight and I'm freaking ecstatic. Their perfectly written and executed pop music cuts right through my rough, indie-rock exterior to my true, sappy core. The fact that they're smokin' and English is pure gravy.