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april 2008

4.1.08
Damn it. Somehow through nearly a week of not syncing my iPhone and a couple of hard restarts, I've lost all data about the music I listened to during that time. It's nothing earthshattering, I know, but the OCD part of me that loves having the minutia of my music-listening life recorded for posterity is pissed.


4.2.08
Remember how much fun it used to be to argue about when, exactly, R.E.M. sold out and/or lost their mojo? Was it the early top 40 single "The One I Love" from Document? The multiple pop smashes from Green? Or were you a real purist who would argue that Lifes Rich Pageant was the beginning of the end?

But man, compared to their last few records, those discs all seem pretty fucking brilliant now. Alright, Green is not brilliant, but Around the Sun is so lousy that it can cause you to momentarily consider the possibility that Green was actually a pretty decent record.


4.3.08
It's shameful that the latest season of The Bachelor is subtitled London Calling (because it's apparently set in London). But if that's the most profane thing that television does to rock's sacred history this year, I guess we got off easy.


4.4.08
I just got tickets to the R.E.M./Modest Mouse show at Merriweather this June. So I guess I'm going to have to buy that new record now. I mean, it's got to be better than Around the Sun, which is the only R.E.M. record I haven't purchased and don't ever plan to, but there's an even chance that it could be as bad as Monster, which is easily the least favorite R.E.M. record I own (and which I didn't buy until years after it was released).


4.7.08
I finally bought some new stuff over the weekend: Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut, Los Campesinos' Hold On Now, Youngster (I've fucking had it with stray punctuation marks in band names, so I'm not going to use the !——just give them a few years and they'll drop it like Panic at the Disco anyway), and the Black Keys' Danger Mouse-produced Attack and Release. I also picked up Belle & Sebastian's Tigermilk used for $8, which was their only full-length I didn't already own.

I was going to take the plunge and buy R.E.M.'s new disc, but the geniuses at the record store didn't buy enough first week stock and they were sold out. So that will wait another week or two unless I talk myself out of it before then.


4.8.08
Although there aren't many differences between the EP and LP versions of Los Campesinos' "You! Me! Dancing!" (there are those damn exclamation points again!!!!!!), they definitely re-recorded it because the two versions have about a 30 second difference in their runtime. I can tell the quietly strummed guitar chords at the beginning are different, but when it comes to the actual song, everything sounds pretty much the same. So why do I want to rate the album version one star lower than the EP version?


4.9.08
I'm not going to say that Vampire Weekend is brilliant, but I will admit that I can't stop listening to their debut album. There are several times when, despite the trick of incorporating of world music elements to make them sound more sophisticated than they actually are, you can hear their inexperience, which sometimes borders on amateurishness. But in almost every song (the irritating "One (Blake's Got A New Face)" aside), there is a moment that just knocks you over, and these little hits of crack come often enough that it's hard to get bored.

This band could be truly great someday. Or they could be the next Dave Matthews Band. Time will tell, but for now, I'm content to live in the present and not examine my affection for this album too closely.


4.10.08
Tigermilk is pretty awesome. I ashamed that it took seeing it in the used bin to make me buy this. I should have owned this years ago.


4.11.08
I think most Black Keys fans would agree that they've been running out of steam on their last couple of releases, and it looks like teaming them with an unconventional producer like Danger Mouse for their latest album, Attack and Release, was just the kick in the ass they needed to revitalize their sound. Despite his reputation as a DJ who works mainly in the rap/hip hop/dance world, Danger Mouse does a great job here of letting the Black Keys still be the band that they are, but giving them a much fuller, richer sound and embellishing their stripped down sound with different guitar effects and subtle backing instrumentation that takes their music far beyond anything they've done before.

This might not be the Black Keys' best collection of songs, but it's certainly their most interesting, and they really neeeded to add something new to their sound. Let's just hope they're smart and have already booked Danger Mouse to take the helm for their next record as well.


4.14.08
Picked up a few more new releases over the weekend: Clinic's Do It!, R.E.M.'s Accelerate, Tapes 'n Tapes' Walk It Off, and British Sea Power's Do You Like Rock Music? I was also intending to get the Breeders' Mountain Battles, but for the second time in as many weeks, the local independent record store chain had sold out of a new release. I just don't get it, guys. I'm trying to give you my freaking money and you just don't seem to want it.


4.15.08
Los Campesinos are a tricky bunch: "My Year in Lists" initially sounds like a goofy love song with a key line being "I cherish with fondness the day I met you." But then you listen closer and you realize that they are stealthily inserting a "before" in there, so that the line actually reads: "I cherish with fondness the day before I met you." And then you listen to the rest of the lyrics and you realize it's not a love song at all, but rather it's about being trapped in a relationship with someone so miserable that they make each new day its own fresh hell. Only the British, man, only the British.


4.16.08
So, yeah, I bought the new R.E.M. album. And, yeah, it kinda sucks. Not as bad as Around the Sun, certainly, but that might be the only nice thing I can say about it so far.


4.17.08
I can't pin it down exactly, but despite their suface differences, there's something about the Go Team and Los Campesinos that's exactly alike (and no, it's not just the superfluous exclamation points in their names, which I am boycotting at the present). Maybe it's the singalong chants that comprise a lot of the vocals, maybe it's the distinct Britishness. Maybe it's just the joy.


4.18.08
So did any of the records I bought last weekend really blow me away? No. But I'm growing much fonder of the British Sea Power release than I expected to, and Clinic's latest might be their best to date, because for the first time in a long time, it sounds like something new (even though it still sounds unmistakably like Clinic). I'm still waiting for this year's first knockout, and I'm hoping it will be one of the new records from Tokyo Police Club or Islands (it would great if they were both amazing), but I'm less disappointed with my recent purchases than I was with the first three records released in 2008 that I bought back in January.


4.21.08
I really like Animal Collective and the solo work of Collective member Panda Bear. But this recent series of loosely affiliated bands who together make up the movement know as freak folk——bands like Ruby Suns, the Dodos, Fleet Foxes, and Beach House——just don't do much for me. On paper, Animal Collective isn't really my cup of tea, but I came around pretty quick once I heard the music. And I guess there's a chance that I could come around on a few of these bands eventually (all of which have been trumpeted by Pitchfork just as loudly as Animal Collective and Panda Bear), but I wish that something about them had resonated with me as immediately as it did with Animal Collective's work.


4.22.08
British Sea Power's Do You Like Rock Music? isn't exactly the barn-burning rocker promised by the title, but I've got to say that I've really fallen in love with the opening track, "All In It". It's a meditative track that builds slowly to an ocean of big, anthemic sounds that support the song's only lyrics:

We're all in it
We're all in it
We're all in it
And we close our eyes

The layered vocals are used to create a round, and the "it" is hardly spoken, so it really sounds like "We're all in". The effect is hypnotic and hopeful and brave, and it's over way too soon.

I was hoping this record would be a return to some of the more aggressive sounds of their debut, songs like "Apologies To Insect Life", "Favours In The Beetroot Fields", and "Remember Me". That's not really the case, but I'm not going to give up on this one until I've given it a very good listen, because if I can find another nugget or two like the title track, it could elevate the record to a top 10 contender for this year.



4.23.08
I've been trying to figure out why I'm just not digging Walk It Off, the sophomore album from Tapes n' Tapes whose debut album, The Loon, was one of my favorites from 2006. The best I can do so far is that it's just too straightforward, and that losing the subtlety and indirectness of their production and the singer's vocal style really takes something away from their songs. It could be that the songs just aren't as good either, but it's hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison because so many elements about their approach to their songs are different.

It's not a terrible album, and it might grow on me still, but from a band that compared favorably to Modest Mouse in their early years, this second effort is a big disappointment.


4.24.08
I have a hard time believing that R.E.M. wouldn't have been better off trying to jumpstart their flagging career by just going back to where it all began and getting Mitch Easter to produce another record for them. Their best work after they became legitimate mainstream stars was New Adventures in Hi-Fi, which was written during soundchecks and on off days during a tour, and that raw, unfiltered sound shows the strength of their songwriting and how unnecessary a studio sheen is for their work (it didn't hurt that that was Bill Berry's last album with the band either——there was something about his rock sensibilities that no one else in the band can bring to the table). Pairing that back-to-basics attitude with Easter's production would have had a much better chance of creating something great than trying to get back onto the radio and the charts with the help of an arena rock specialist.


4.25.08
Picked up a couple of new things last night: the Breeders' Mountain Battles and Tokyo Police Club's debut full length, Elephant Shell. I also looked for recent albums from Thao, Cut Copy, and M-83, but I didn't find them, which is beyond frustrating, because two of those are recent releases that have gotten a lot of attention, and the other was released in the last few months by Kill Rock Stars, one of the biggest indie labels in the country.

I was concerned about how the recent takeover of this record chain would affect selection and prices, and I think I'm starting to get the answer: higher prices and much more limited selection. Which really sucks, because now I'll either need to find a better, truly independent record store (which will likely be hell and gone from where I live and work), or I'm going to have to start downloading all my music, which I'm just not ready to do yet..


4.28.08
I was this close to downloading the Thao, M-83, and Cut Copy discs that I couldn't find in the record store last week from iTunes when I decided to see how much it would cost to order the CDs from Amazon. iTunes total: $26. Amazon total (shipping was free because the total order was over $25): $31. And an extra $5 is worth it to me to own physical copies of the music, so for now, it looks like I'll stick with Amazon if the local record store isn't going to come through for me.

I don't really like to do this, because it feels wasteful to me to have things shipped to me in small orders like that, but it's also pretty ridiculous that downloads, which are lower quality and cost the record companies nothing in terms of manufacturing and distribution, cost almost as much as physical copies that had to be burned, packaged, and shipped to record stores. You get that price down to something reasonable——say, $6 per album or lower——and it's going to be hard for anyone to justify purchasing physical copies (and a lot harder for the illegal downloaders to justify their activities based on expense).

But we already know how short-sighted and small-minded the people who run the record industry are, so let them keep doing what they're doing, and pretty soon they'll all be history.


4.29.08
Those Amazon CDs got here yesterday, which is a lot faster than I was expecting (the free shipping note said it would take 5-9 business days, and that was at most 3). This might have to become my preferred method of new music acquisition until iTunes or whoever can address some of my longstanding concerns about downloading music (or until they drop the price of a downloaded album to a ridiculously low amount). I bet if I preorder I could get everything the official day of release, too.


4.30.08
Love love love Thao's We Brave Bee Stings and All. I was hoping this record might be my first true love of 2008, and it sounds like it so far. If only the fucking record store had decided to stock this back when it was released back in January.