8.2.10
Sorry for the long absence. My wife gave birth to our son about three weeks ago, and adjusting to that has kept me from thinking too much about this site. This week will likely be pretty light on content as well, partly because this has become a lower priority, and partly because there just hasn't been much new music released this summer (and you know how I about my big projects for this site, like my top 50 singles/albums of the last 10 years and my year mixtape series). But there will be posts of some sort.
8.3.10
The release of of Montreal's new record, False Priest, is only about six weeks away, and since my last batch of posts in early July, the band announced a tour with Janelle Monaé in support of the record, starting with two shows at the 9:30 Club the day before and the day of the record's release. That means a Monday and a Tuesday show, and for most bands I would even consider one of those, but for of Montreal, I'm planning to attend both.
I just missed them when they released their last album (they again kicked off their tour at the 9:30 Club right around the album's release date), and although I did finally see them when they did a quick tour up and down the east coast earlier this year, it wasn't the full-fledged theatrical performance that I'm expecting with this tour.
There's another 9:30 Club show that I really want to see this fall too——Surfer Blood with the Drums opening——but unfortunatley, that show is the day before the two of Montreal dates, and there's just no way I can make the trip down to DC three days in a row during the week. Two in a row is going to be bad enough——I'm likely going to end up taking two days off, one after each show, to recover——but for a band like of Montreal, it's worth it.
8.4.10
More of Montreal goodness: a video of their performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last week. It's a pretty straightforward rendition of the first single from False Priest, "Coquet Coquette".
They also performed another song from False Priest, "Sex Karma", with Solange Knowles, but for some reason that video isn't on the NBC site (even though that's the song you saw if you actually watched the show——the "Coquet Coquette video is a web exclusive) and it's been removed by YouTube.
8.5.10
After a too long a silence, Jens Lekman seems to be stirring again. He hasn't released any new music since 2007's Night Falls Over Kortedala, but just last week he unveiled "The End of the World Is Bigger Than Love", which will hopefully turn out to be the first single from an as-yet unannounced album. It's embedded below; give the widget your email address and you can download your own copy.
The song would fit nicely with the material on Night Falls, and that's perfectly okay with me. I'm not really looking for a stylistic evolution from Jens; I just want more of his songs, and I want to know that he's out in the world being Jens. Hopefully he'll decamp from the studio soon, share a new record with us, and come visit us in our favorite indie rock venues. In the meantime, at least he's given us some small morsel to tide us over.
8.6.10
Last night, I watched a bit of the Arcade Fire show at Madison Square Garden that was webcast by YouTube and directed by Terry Gilliam. Only seven of the seventeen songs they played were from their most recent 16-song opus The Suburbs, which might seem unusual since the tour is to support that record, but not surprising if you've actually listened to it, because most of it is pretty average. And not average for the standards that Arcade Fire set for themselves on Funeral——just plain average.
I really like this impulse——a big band known for their live performances that a lot of people aren't going to get to catch on tour sharing a live show at a huge venue for free——but I'm so disappointed with this album that it was hard to get excited about it.
And let me say, because I know everyone who watched that webcast is thinking it, that Win Butler has the dumbest haircut in all of rock.
8.9.10
I was kind of looking foward to a cleaned up version of Wavves' distorted fuzz, but King of the Beach might be a little too clean. Either that or the new songs just aren't as good. Still willing to give this a few more listens, but there are very few songs I'm taking to the way I did most of the tracks on Wavvves, and so far even the best material here doesn't hold a lyrical or musical candle to the standouts on the last album.
8.10.10
Time for this month's 100 $5 MP3 downloads from Amazon, which for August has been expanded to an astonishing 1,000 albums. I'm just going to focus on the 100 indie and alternative albums, because I'm not sure it's worth my time (or yours) to wade through 100 R&B or country albums. The list is pretty long, but every one of these records is a bargain at $5:
This Is Happening——LCD Soundsystem OK Computer——Radiohead One Life Stand——Hot Chip The Drums——The Drums If You're Feeling Sinister——Belle & Sebastian The Sunlandic Twins——of Montreal Good Morning Spider——Sparklehorse Wavvves——Wavves Here's to Shutting Up——Superchunk Let's Stay Friends——Les Savy Fav
There are a bunch of others, including recent releases from Stars, the Hold Steady, and Tokyo Police Club, along with a slew of older releases that are definitely worth $5 to me but which I don't feel as strongly about as the albums on the list above. If any of bands/albums I've listed are among your favorites, this month's list of 100 specifically indie/alternative albums is worth sorting through for some bargains.
8.11.10
I'm still trying to give the new Arcade Fire a chance, but when I listened to Funeral for the first time, it had stopped my heart several times by the time I got halfway through it. On The Suburbs, it wasn't until the sixth track, "City With No Children", that I got at all excited, and that was for a track that, while it might not have been out of place on Funeral, wouldn't have been the first track that made me perk up.
I still desperately want this band to be good, but I'm afraid they might be done for me. The critical and commercial response to this album has been overwhelmingly positive——a number one debut on the Billboard charts with 156,000 copies sold, and strong reviews everywhere from Entertainment Weekly to Pitchfork to New Musical Express to the Onion AV Club. But I'm just not feeling it.
8.12.10
From what I can piece together, the first full song that my son ever heard was of Montreal's "Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider." I knew it was of Montreal of some sort, because I was on an of Montreal bender the weekend he was born, but it's only through my last.fm history that I'm able to reconstruct which track specifically.
8.13.10
Been on a real 80s kick recently, but if I'm going to make a proper playlist, I'm going to need to go back and rate a lot more tracks from that era.
Every other song it's the Smiths, the Police, New Order, and the Pixies. Not that any of those are bad things——but I would like a little more variety in the shuffle.
8.16.10
So apparently Julian Cope has apparently released an album's worth of more or less conventional recordings (conventional in Cope's musical world anyway) called Black Sheep that I'd really like to hear. And it's even available on iTunes. The problem: it's priced at $19.99 for just 11 songs. Since it's basically a self-released record (it's on his own Head Heritage label), he must be behind the pricing decision, but it's hard to imagine paying that much for 11 tracks, especially in a digital format.
But the lure of Cope is strong for me; I've been waiting for a genuine follow up to his last great record, 1995's 20 Mothers (Interpreter was just too weird and trippy, and I'm saying that as a fan who knows that these are two adjectives that are used often when describing Cope and his work), and even if Black Sheep isn't it, the clips indicate that it's at least on that same path, unlike the rest of his work this decade. So I don't know. If I had a $20 iTunes gift card, I might blow it on this record, but I don't know if I'll be able to convince myself to take that money out of my own pocket for it.
8.17.10
The upcoming of Montreal release, False Priest, will be a perfect storm of two patterns of record buying anticipation that I've experienced with past obsessions, and none of the outcomes bodes all that well for the new disc.
The first of these happens when I get really
into a band just after they've released a new album and toured behind it, and then wait for longer than normal to release the follow up. The two best examples of this from my personal history are Liz Phair (I got really into Exile in Guyville and Whip-Smart around 1996, and then spent the next two years reading rumor sites and waiting desperately for her next record that finally came out in 1998) and Modest Mouse (who I got into with the release of The Moon and Antarctica in 2000 and who didn't release their next record until 2004, despite a prodigous and frequent output of new material up to that point).
The second half of this pattern, of course, is that the desperately waited for follow up record turns out to be a medium to large disappointment that is nowhere near as good as the records that got me hooked on the artist in the first place, and that's my real fear with False Priest. There's so much I loved about their last three records that there's almost no way that this album won't be something of a disappointment, but at least from the tracks I've heard so far, it shouldn't be the big letdown that Whitechocolatespaceegg and Good News for People Who Love Bad News were.
8.18.10
The other anticipation issue that's hitting with False Priest is the dream collaboration letdown. This record is being produced by Jon Brion, one of my favorite producers (he's behind the best albums from Eels, Fiona Apple, and Rufus Wainwright, and he's worked on some great stuff with other artists as varied as Kanye West and Robyn Hitchcock), and given his outstanding EP of remixes from of Montreal's last record, there's almost no way this couldn't turn out to be one of the best possible pairings of artist and producer.
Except that this, too, has happened before, and the results didn't turn out as well as expected. The first time I encountered this was when Joe Strummer produced the Pogues' Hell's Ditch. Not only am I a huge fan of the Clash, but I also loved Joe Strummer's first solo album, Earthquake Weather, which was released the year before Hell's Ditch.
It's not that Hell's Ditch was a terrible album——in fact, it contains some real gems and overall is a pretty solid listen——it's just that, with Strummer producing, I somehow expected something more. I wanted that undefinable essence of Joe Strummer to be present on the album, and it just wasn't there. If I hadn't known he had produced it, I probably would have liked the album even more, but knowing that he was involved raised expectations to a level that the album ultimately didn't meet.
The second time this dream collaboration element led to a letdown was just last year, when Frank Black (aka Black Francis of the Pixies) produced Art Brut's latest record. Art Brut was a hard fought bit of fandom for me. At first
I thought they were too jokey to take seriously, and then I thought they were a one trick pony that made a single amazing album that they would never again repeat. But after a great sophomore outing, It's a Bit Complicated, I started to believe that they could actually make a career out of this, and I got very excited when I heard they had recruited Frank Black to produce their third disc.
I don't know if my response to that record was purely Frank Black's fault——the references back to 80s bands and mixtapes were starting to wear a little thin, and overall the songs just weren't as compelling lyrically or musically as their first two albums——but his production sure didn't help. At times it felt way too slick and bass-heavy; other times it felt thin and non-existant. Either way, it didn't work.
But I've still got hope that the of Montreal/Jon Brion pairing will turn out for the best. Kevin Barnes still seems to be at the height of his creative powers, and he recorded the entire album without Brion's help before heading to LA for a few months to rework it with Brion, so he has a clear vision of how he wants the album to sound (before he started working with Brion, Barnes said he'd be happy releasing the album as-is, and would only use the sessions with Brion if they really added something to the finished product). And Brion is certainly sensitive to the band's style; his EP of remixes used a deft touch to expose new elements already present in the songs rather than deconstructing them to be songs that were more Brion than of Montreal.
8.19.10
There's been another little drought of new releases, but yesterday I pre-ordered a bunch of stuff coming out in the next few weeks, including the long-awaited False Priest by of Montreal. The rest of the batch included the Thermals' Personal Life, Les Savy Fav'sRoot for Ruin, and Ra Ra Riot'sThe Orchard.
I also ordered Crooked by Kristin Hersh, which is actually a book, but it's a book about her latest album (which shares the Crooked title), and it includes a download code for the album. Given that I was able to get the book for $13.50 from Amazon (and the price could still theoretically drop by the time it ships), it really isn't much more than a CD would be, and the book contains an awful lot more information about the music than a typical CD insert would.
8.20.10
In addition to all the pre-orders, I also picked up two records that are already out: Echo & the Bunnymen's most recent release, The Fountain, and Big Boi'sSir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty (I'm willing to give good odds that those two have never been ordered simultaneously before).
I'm not sure what I'll think about either of these records. I ordered the Big Boi because there's some sort of Georgia nexus involving him, Janelle Monáe, and of Montreal that I'm curious about, and also because, aside from "Hey Now", I've always liked his Outkast tracks better than Andre 3000's. I know I should probably give up on Echo & the Bunnymen, but I keep hoping that just once when some reviewer says that one of their recent records is a return to their early sound, it will actually be true, and what I heard on the 20 second iTunes clips gave me enough hope to think this might be true enough for The Fountain to be worth a shot.
8.23.10
Another installment of my top 50 singles from the first decade of the new century. At this rate there's an outside chance I'll finish the top 50 singles and albums from the aughts before the end of the teens...
"Soundtrack 2 My Life" Kid Cudi Man On The Moon: The End Of Day
2009
If I were redoing this list today, Kid Cudi probably would have already moved up a few spots. Aside from Kanye's first three records, this might be my favorite hip hop album of the decade, and this track embodies its spirit.
"A Certain Romance" Arctic Monkeys Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
2006
There are a lot of great lines from the first year or two of the Arctic Monkeys' career, but my favorite might be "There's only music so that there's new ringtones", which is the best gallows humor about the sad state of the music industry I've yet heard. That it's said in the context of a song that's really about the sad state of modern romance makes its criticism even more biting. This is the only track on their debut that's longer than five minutes, and every second of it is brilliant.
"Lisztomania" Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
2009
I already spent a bit of time in my 2009 top 10 singles list explaining why I picked this track over the equally amazing "1901" to represent Phoenix, so I won't rehash that hear. Suffice it to say that the fact that this track is only ranked at 38 shows just how much great music was released in the past ten years.
"Clear Island" Liars Liars
2007
This song makes me want to smash things. I don't know how they convince venues to let them play this live.
"Me-I" TV On The Radio Warm & Scratchy (Adult Swim compilation)
2007
Look, I really appreciate the layers of complexity in the song structures and production of TVOTR's studio efforts, but there's something so goddamn charming about the casualness with which this song is tossed off that I can't resist putting it on this list over equally great tracks like "Poppy", "Dreams", and "Blind".
"St. Rosa And The Swallows" The Thermals The Body, The Blood, The Machine
2006
Probably the most optimistic song on an otherwise angry and bleak (but consistently catchy and brilliant) album. I had a dream about spending the day with an old friend when I was going through a particularly stressful time in my life, and when I woke up, things seemed better even though nothing had changed except that I'd had that dream.
This is a song about all those endless days when nothing seems to ever get better, but it's got this one hopeful line: "The day's only clear for a second". To me, this is about that one moment of clarity you get each day, the tiny thing you see or do or feel that lets you get through the rest of the day with the faith that someday the days will get better. That's what the dream was for me, and this song makes me feel that all over again every time I hear it.
"The Rake's Song" The Decemberists The Hazards of Love
2009
This is hardly the right song to represent the Decemberists; other than the story in the lyrics, which feels like it might be from the introductory chapter of a 19th century British novel, this really isn't a typical Decemberists song. It starts with two alternating staccato guitar chords and Colin Meloy's voice; then the over the top bass drum kicks in and it's off to the races.
It's more forceful than anything else they've ever written, and also more straightforward and simple. And don't get me wrong: I love the Decemberists. Even their recent forays into concept albums and prog rock song cycles that dangerously toe the Spinal Tap parody line have hardly lessened my affection for them. This is a definite outlier in their catalog, but maybe that's why I love it so much.
"The Fitted Shirt" Spoon Girls Can Tell
2000
Kill the Moonlight is still my favorite Spoon album, and it has a string of songs that are hard to beat: "Small Stakes", "The Way We Get By", "Something To Look Forward To", "Jonathon Fisk", "Paper Tiger", and on and on. "The Fitted Shirt" isn't like much else in their catalog, and seems to borrow a lot from early heavy metal, but that may also be why it stands out in a very deep catalog of quality songs.
"The Opposite Of Hallelujah" Jens Lekman Night Falls Over Kortedala
2007
Picking one song to represent Jens Lekman in this list was beyond difficult, but this one has a real personal resonance for me. There's been a disconnect between my youngest sister and me for the past few years that I don't know how we're ever going to move beyond. Sometimes it's the ones you love the most who are the hardest to connect with...
"Hard To Explain" The Strokes Is This It?
2001
This is the song that convinced me that the Strokes were the real deal amidst all the hype that came with their debut album, and nearly ten years on, it still
delivers. Their subsequent output had its ups and downs, and you can't help but wonder what kind of band they might have become if they had had to dig a little harder to win fame and fortune. But this song, and this album as a whole, still holds up for me.
8.24.10
I've listened to Echo & the Bunnymen'sThe Fountain a few times now, and just like everything I've heard since Evergreen (the original back to basics record they released way back in 1997), it's not what I had hoped it would be. There are a few decent tracks ("Think I Need It Too" and "Life of 1,000 Crimes" are the strongest), but nothing I couldn't live without. "Forgotten Fields" has a nice Big Country feel, and the title could be cribbed from that band's early work as well.
It might be better to bill The Fountain as a solo Ian McCulloch effort; if that were the case, it would definitely be a high point of his solo career. But a return to Echo & the Bunnymen's glory days it's not.
8.25.10
I started really liking the second half of Wavves' King of the Beach until I realized what it was I liked so much about it: the best tracks sound like a hookier version of Animal Collective. I can kind of appreciate his branching out——I mean, he had to go somewhere from the straight ahead approach of Wavvves——but this is either going to be his weird transitional album that leads to his future sound or it's going to be a final surge towards greatness before falling permanently into mediocrity.
8.26.10
Back in 2005, it seemed like Canada was becoming the hotspot for indie music. In 2004, Arcade Fire had released their critically acclaimed Funeral, which was followed the next year by some pretty great releases by their countrymen: Stars came out with Set Yourself on Fire, Wolf Parade with Apologies to the Queen Mary, the New Pornographers with Twin Cinema, and Broken Social Scene with their eponymous follow up to the amazing You Forgot It In People. In the context of some very good albums, here's how I ranked those bands in comparison to one another then:
Arcade Fire
Wolf Parade
Broken Social Scene
The New Pornographers
Stars
All of these bands also released albums within a few months of one another in 2010, and they all released at least one other album in the intervening years (most in 2007, but Wolf Parade in 2008 and Broken Social Scene in both 2007 and 2008). This second crop of releases was mostly a disappointment compared to the 2004-2005 wave; Arcade Fire'sNeon Bible was probably the strongest of this group, and it wasn't anywhere near as good as Funeral. The New Pornographers' Challengers was solid, but it didn't show a lot of attempted growth. It's hard to fault an indie supergroup with such solid and consistent pop songwriting skills, but after The Electric Version and Twin Cinema, you had to wonder what the point of more of exactly the same (except with more mid and slow tempo tracks) on Challengers was.
Wolf Parade'sAt Mount Zoomer was a major disappointment for me; it was just average (and maybe a bit below average), and I was expecting so much more after the brilliant Queen Mary. It was much weaker than it should have been because of the multiple side projects that co-leads Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner devoted themselves to in the interim (albums with Sunset Rubdown, Handsome Furs, Frog Eyes, and Swan Lake)——creatively, the songwriters were just out of steam.
Broken Social Scene suffered a similar glut of material that probably would have been better edited down to a single album: two solo albums from primary contributors Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning "presented by" Broken Social Scene. I'm sure that the band understands the difference between these records and what they consider proper Broken Social Scene releases, but the albums were recorded by members of Broken Social Scene and the Broken Social Scene name is on the cover, so I'm not really sure how fans are supposed to label them. All I know is that if you took the best songs from each of the "presented by" efforts and edited the track count down to 10-12 songs, you'd have a pretty decent Broken Social Scene album instead of two mediocre, watered-down releases.
The biggest disappointment of all from the 2007-2008 wave, however, was Stars' In Our Bedroom After the War, which
only had a couple of decent songs on it. They had the weakest release of these five bands in 2005, but that release also held a lot of promise, which they utterly failed to live up to on the sequel.
My ranking of these bands after the 2007-2008 releases remained mostly the same, but aside from The New Pornographers, all of these groups had all dropped in my overall band rankings; none of the remaining four met or exceeded the standard they set with their 2004-2005 releases.
So by 2008, here's how my rankings would have looked:
Arcade Fire
Broken Social Scene
The New Pornographers
Wolf Parade
Stars
8.27.10
So now we're in 2010, and
we've got a new batch of albums from the Canadian indie contingent to add to the mix. Stars has made a real comeback——their latest, The Five Ghosts, isn't quite as good as Set Yourself on Fire, but it's close, and it's definitely a major surprise after the disaster of In Our Bedroom After the War. Broken Social Scene'sForgiveness Rock Record is also close to the same quality of their eponymous 2005 release, and it's nice to see that, when they put their minds to it and aren't doing some sort of "presented by" nonsense, they can still put out a record that's solid all the way through.
The new Wolf Parade album, Expo 86, still feels like it could have been sharper and more focused——none of those multiple side projects have gone away——but it seems like Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner are collaborating on each other's songs rather than each taking turns at the helm and having sometimes conflicting visions. It's still not anywhere near as good as Queen Mary, but when paired with an increase in quality from their numerous side projects in the last couple of years, it gives me hope that they're back on a good path and that their records will be worth buying in the future.
The New Pornographers have made a nice course correction with Together——sure, it's more of their signature indie guitar pop, but the production is more lively, the songwriting is strong, and it really feels like the primary members have reinvested in the band after the scattershot and bored-sounding Challengers and a few releases as solo artists or with their other projects. Together is a perfect title for their newly reunified front.
Perhaps the most surprising of all is the dramatic downfall of Arcade Fire, who have been trending downward since their debut and who show absolutely no signs of returning to their former glory anytime soon. The Suburbs was released just a few weeks ago, and although people seem to be buying it at a brisk clip and the critics generally adore it, I find very few tracks of any interest at all, and I think it's going to take a lot for me to buy their next record without hearing it first.
After this crop of releases, which saw most of these five bands recovering from a stumble in 2007-2008, here's how I would rank everyone:
The New Pornographers
Broken Social Scene
Wolf Parade
Arcade Fire
Stars
The New Pornographers have been the most consistent over this period, and even their weakest record from the past half decade wasn't that bad. Broken Social Scene has had more highs and lows on each record, but their overall output has also been pretty consistently good, and it's really a tossup between them and the New Pornographers for the top slot.
Wolf Parade, when taken in the context of the galaxy of releases associated with the two primary songwriters, are on an upward trend for the past couple of years, and although Stars seem stuck at the bottom of this list, they, too, are on a positive trend. If Funeral hadn't been as brilliant as it was (and is), Arcade Fire would have easily slid to the lowest spot this year, and if Stars' next release is decent, I fully expect that this is exactly where Arcade Fire will be at that point.
8.30.10
I got the new Ra Ra Riot CD, The Orchard, last week. I bought their debut, The Rhumb Line, when it came out a couple of years ago, and before I went back to relisten to it, this is all I remembered about it: 1) I liked it but didn't love it and 2) it reminded me a bit of Vampire Weekend, whose debut CD also came out the same year.
And that's pretty much my impression of The Rhumb Line after relistening to it, so I wasn't sure exactly what to expect from The Orchard. I've only listened to it a couple of times at this point, but so far, it seems more lush and languid than their debut without being any better. And even though Vampire Weekend's second CD sounds like an extension of their first, Ra Ra Riot don't sound much like them at all anymore even though there are still plenty of sound elements shared by The Rhumb Line and The Orchard.
So I don't really know what I think of it yet, but I'd be surprised if this ended up being one of my favorites this year.
8.31.10
The new Big Boi disc is definitely worth owning. I'm not enough of a consumer of hip hop and rap to do any kind of detailed analysis and comparison of other stuff in that genre——I either like it or I don't——but it's hard for me to see how, if you like anything in the rap or hip hop realm, you won't find a lot of stuff to like on Sir Lucious Left Foot.
