notes - archives - september 2005

9.2.05
Lucinda Williams' "Joy" is going to have a weird new significance in the aftermath of Katrina, as will just about any song written in or about New Orleans. Let's just hope the government gets off its ass soon and starts taking action to help those people and restore some semblance of civil order.

9.6.05
iTunes had a real obsession with and Marty Willson-Piper's Art Attack and Sunny Day Real Estate yesterday. The Willson-Piper thing was quaint at first, but quickly became tiresome, especially as it seemed to focus on the more laborious tracks from that album rather than the ones that are actually still worth remembering. But I should probably be listening to more Sunny Day Real Estate anyway, so iTunes' encouragement in that area was not unwelcome.

9.7.05
Yesterday the iPod went heavy on Guided By Voices and the New Pornographers. An interesting contrast, since GBV's Robert Pollard is often referred to as the king of indie rock, while the Pornographers' A.C. Newman is the king of indie pop. I don't really have any observations that go any deeper than that, but I thought it was a little peculiar that the machine seemed obsessed with playing tunes by those two yesterday, often back to back.

9.8.05
A friend tacked this question onto the end of an email to me yesterday:

Curious what your thoughts are on Mazzy Star, if any. I'm finding it's growing on me lately.

And rather than do the polite thing and answer him back in an email, I'm going to instead use his query as the basis of today's content.

So my thoughts on Mazzy Star are these: "Fade Into You" is an undeniably beautiful song; far more one-hit wonder alternative acts made their fortunes and hit the apex of their commercial careers on songs much less worthwhile. And Hope Sandoval has one of those ethereal, world-weary voices that sound so much like what you would imagine a ghost would sound like that you can almost feel her fading into you when she sings. However: nothing else I've heard from this band even comes close to the delicate grandeur of their signature track, a song so seductive that I was almost suckered into buying the album that goes with it, So That Tonight I Might See.

But I could never bring myself to do it, since I had the sneaking suspicion that the rest of the disc would live up to the promise of "Fade Into You". And listening to the samples on iTunes, I still feel pretty good about that decision——there are some other promising tracks on there, but nothing that grips the way "Fade" did the first time I heard it (and pretty much every time after that as well). At best, the other tracks aspire to the sublimity of this little gem without actually getting anywhere near it.

To be fair, if I had this CD with me when I was driving on a lonely Colorado highway at 3 a.m., heading east towards the nothingness of Kansas with no one in particular waiting for me when I got there, this record might gain a few points for context. But out here in the busy buzzing of urban decay, it just doesn't work.

9.9.05
Okay, so the iPod nano is kind of cool. But I'm not sure it's quite what I was asking for when I was saying Apple needed some new kind of iPod to recapture the public's imagination. And I don't think that stupid phone is it, either (although it's going to be awfully hard to resist when I see one on display at the local Cingular store).

9.12.05
iTunes 5 was released last week, along with the iPod nano and the ROKR Motorola iTunes cell phone, and although it was the least hyped of the three products, it finally contains a feature that I've been clamoring for since the first time I opened the application: the ability to create folders to hold your playlists, so you can group them and hide them by category instead of having one gigantic list of all your playlists that is kept in alphabetical order. If this program actually cost money, I'd recommend paying for an upgrade based on this new feature alone, although it looks like they made a lot of other modifications as well. But since it's free, how can you not upgrade? Seriously, download it now. You can thank me later.

9.13.05
Four new purchases: Death Cab for Cutie's Plans, the New Pornographers' Twin Cinema, and two used discs from Sunny Day Real Estate, Diary and The Rising Tide. Not much to say about any of them so far, except that Plans is not as good as I'd hoped, although there a few tracks that are better than anything on Transatlanticism. Other than that, I haven't listened to them very much and have no solid impressions yet.

9.14.05
"Mice eat cheese."

It's as true today as it was when Isaac Brock wrote it for Modest Mouse's aborted debut album over ten years ago.

9.15.05

Mixtape: 1987

Track 17
"Could You Be the One?"
Warehouse: Songs and Stories
Hüsker Dü

Looking back now, with more than a decade's worth of quality work with Sugar and on solo albums, it's easy for us to say that Bob Mould was obviously the creative genius behind Hüsker Dü. Grant Hart, the drummer and other songwriter in this trio, made a couple of post Hüsker records, but nothing that managed to acheive notable critical or commercial success, while Mould went on to become a major force in the alternative rock scene (and by that I mean the real scene, the college kids and record store weirdos scene, not the "alternative" rock that was an overproduced derivative of the grunge craze from the early 90s).

But back in the 80s it wasn't so clear——there were definitely differences in the songwriting, but Mould and Hart complemented each other very well musically, to the point where it was sometimes hard to tell who wrote the song (even though they were pretty faithful to the rule that says you write it, you get to sing it). You didn't spend much time thinking about whether a track was a Mould song or a Hart song——it was a Hüsker Dü song, and that was that.

Warehouse: Songs and Stories turned out to be the swan song for Hüsker Dü, but what a way to go out: a sprawling double-album that is accessible and accomplished without sacrificing the guitar fuzz and percussive assault that they built their early reputation on.

"Could You Be the One?" is kind of a whimsical choice to fill this spot——a fairly straighforward shot of power pop that isn't as representative of the tone of Warehouse in the way that, say, "Standing in the Rain", "It's Not Peculiar", or "No Reservations" (just to name a few) are. If I was really going to be nice, I would have chosen a Grant Hart tune, because this is really his last shot to show up on one of these year mixtapes, while I'm pretty sure that you're going to get many more helpings from Mr. Mould. "Actual Condition" is kind of Hart's complement to "Could You Be the One?"——a raucous little pop song influenced by 50s rockabilly that's decidedly distinct from the other Hart-penned tunes on Warehouse. Hart's best track is proabably "Back from Somewhere", although "You Can Live at Home" is a close second.

But I chose "Could You Be the One?", so that's what you get.

9.16.05
I just realized that I'm only a month away from the two-year anniversary of this site, and I haven't even finished the second of my year mixtapes. When I nicknamed them year mixtapes, I wasn't trying to say that they would take a year to write; in fact, I kind of assumed that they would take up the bulk of the entries on this site for the first year or two. By now, I was expecting to be through the mid-90s and needing to throttle back a bit, because I'm not going to make a year mixtape until at least five years after that year has passed and there's some semblance of historical perspective.

Instead, I find myself nearly 20 years behind still, which just isn't what I want. So in addition to finishing 1987 before the second anniversary, I'm also going to try and do a new mixtape (including all the commentary) every three months, which means it will still be five years before I get to a point where I'll only have an annual tape for the year that happened five years earlier than whatever the current year is, but I need to start setting some goals or it will never happen.

9.19.05

Mixtape: 1987

Track 18
"Happy When It Rains"
Darklands
Jesus and Mary Chain

I remember seeing an interview with William and Jim Reid, the brothers at the heart of the Jesus and Mary Chain, on MTV's now-defunct 120 Minutes. Jim, who did most of the singing, was prattling on in response to a question, when he suddenly realized that William had been silent for entirely too long, so he prompted his brother to add to the conversation. William, who clearly did not enjoy the spotlight as much as Jim, paused for a second, then looked straight into the camera and deadpanned, "I completely agree with everything he just said."

That story is apropos of nothing, it's just another of the many memories I have of sitting in the dorm lounge after midnight on Sunday with my friends from NCSSM, playing cards and watching videos from our favorite bands that no one else had heard of. With Darklands, their sophomore effort, the Jesus and Mary Chain (I refuse to use the now-popular JAMC acronym popularized by a track from Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism) went from being known primarily for the intense washes of feedback and 30 minute shows that left the audience's ears ringing to a legitimate college radio contender who would eventually go on to a reasonable amount of commercial success in the US.

"Happy When It Rains" is the perfect representative from this record, which veers between angst and exuberance, and as someone who first listened to it as an moody teen, it holds a very special place in my heart. The ringing guitars and propulsive beat can remind you of U2's cheerier moments, but it's cut by the revelation in the lyrics that the singer is talking about someone he loved who is no longer part of his life. And it's a mistake to compare these Scots with their world-changing contemporaries in Dublin: even when the Reid brothers are unleashing their biggest hooks and coming as close to actually singing as they ever would, there's still a somber note of quiet, graceful longing that lends a tinge of gloom to even the most upbeat tracks.

But I don't think you need to be a mopey depressive with raging hormones to appreciate the unique charms of this album: even now, nearly 20 years later (good god that's hard to believe) and mostly removed from the moodswings that alternated between sad, angry, and happy, this is an eminently listenable record. And Darklands really is the perfect name for it.

9.20.05

Mixtape: 1987

Track 19
"Just Like Heaven"
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
The Cure

Look, if you're reading this and you don't know who the Cure are, or you've never listened to Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, or you've somehow managed to avoid ever hearing "Just Like Heaven", well, then I just don't get you. This is the song that Robert Smith was born to write, that the Cure were born to play. This is it. This is The Single. Yes, we can all agree that Disintegration, which followed Kiss Me, is the band's masterwork, but this song trumps everything on that disc in the singles category (although "Pictures of You" comes close, or at least it did until it was used in that HP photo campaign last year). There's simply nothing else to say. So why are we still talking?

9.21.05

Mixtape: 1987

Track 20
"Can't Hardly Wait"
Pleased to Meet Me
The Replacements

I didn't experience the Replacements' slow climb to greatness, borne aloft on homemade wings pieced together from Paul Westerberg's sadness, irony, pain, and humor; I arrived just in time to see them reach the pinnacle of their flight, hang in the air for a moment that seemed to last forever, and then plunge with sickening velocity to the ground far below.

Maybe that's a little melodramatic, but man, these guys went from the best band America to one of the worst with a speed unmatched by few other bands in the brief history of rock. I mean, they had Let It Be, Tim, and Pleased to Meet Me right in a row; if entrance into the Hall of Fame was based on something besides name recognition, these three would make them a lock for entry no matter how bad the rest of their catalog might be (and that's a good thing, because, well, some the stuff that came after Pleased to Meet Me is pretty bad).

Pleased to Meet Me was my first Replacements album, and so while I understand that some of their older, hardcore fans see it as a relatively slick record that was a big step down the slippery slope to mediocrity which the band would slide headlong into on their next record, Don't Tell a Soul, it still, in my heart of hearts, my favorite Replacements record. Let It Be and Tim are amazing, and although my brain knows that Let It Be is clearly a better record and you can make a pretty good argument for Tim being better as well, Pleased to Meet Me wins because this was the record that made me fall in love with the band and be motivated to buy their earlier work.

"Can't Hardly Wait" is a solid mid-tempo rocker that, unlike its many cousins on Don't Tell a Soul, fails to suck. This track, along with "Skyway" and "Nightclub Jitters", show how the band could have evolved and explored new musical approaches without abandoning the damaged charm that made them famous. These tracks all cover some new territory for the band, but they don't seem out of place next to more traditional Replacements fare like "I.O.U." and "Red Red Wine". Unfortunately, this would be their last decent album, and really the last of this kind of record made by primary creative force Paul Westerberg, who would go on to issue the odd great single here and there, but who would never again put together an album's worth of solid songs that were faithful to the Replacements' sound or ethos.

9.22.05
I miss Too Much Joy. I don't usually go for those semi-jokey bands, but every now and then one of them strikes a chord. I still don't see why these guys didn't end up with some kind of monstrous radio success in the early 90s——I mean, fuck, if the Presidents of the United States of America could make their millions, Too Much Joy certainly deserved to.

9.23.05
In anticipation of finally finishing the 1987 mixtape commentary (one more song!), I've started compiling the candidates for 1988, and I've got to tell you, this one is nearly as easy as the previous two. Most of the time, I have an abundance of good albums to choose from, and I end up having to cut groups that, had the weather been different on the day I was making the choices, would have been in the mix. But for this year, I have barely enough to round out the 20 or songs I'll need, and I find myself wishing I didn't have to include a few of the acts that will likely end up making the cut.

Also, when I first rip the candidates into iTunes, I typically have no problem listening to a mix of all those records for a couple of weeks straight, because there's usually so much stuff that I love that I haven't heard in a while (a lot of the older stuff in my CD collection hasn't been brought into iTunes or the iPod yet, and since that's pretty much the only way I listen to music nowadays, that means I haven't heard a lot these songs in a couple of years). But this one I got bored of after only a couple of days, and I actually took the extreme step of removing albums that I just couldn't stomach, despite having remembering them as decent or even pretty good.

It's not that I don't have a big enough base to draw from, either——I own far more albums from that year than I do from either 1986 or 1987——it's just that most of them have not stood the test of time the way the stuff from the other two years have. The standouts are amazing——great records from Jane's Addiction, Throwing Muses, House of Freaks, Soul Asylum, Camper Van Beethoven, Sonic Youth, the Pogues, Robyn Hitchcock, and the Pixies——but the second tier records are few and far between. Everything from this year either seems to be kind of mediocre or really excellent. Should make for an interesting mixtape, if I can get motivated to put it together.

9.26.05
Despite my misgivings about the volume of quality material I'd have to work with, I've made a lot of progress on the 1988 mixtape. Now I just have to finish the last entry for 1987, and I actually think I'll be in pretty good shape to deliver a decent portion of 1988 before the second anniversary of this site.

9.27.05
Out of the blue yesterday I realized that I didn't have Rage Against the Machine's The Battle of Los Angeles loaded into iTunes. That situation was quickly remedied.

9.28.05
Went to see the White Stripes with the Shins opening last night. I'll do a more complete write-up later, but here are a couple of initial observations:

Meg White has officially taken the title of world's luckiest mediocre drummer from Ringo. That said, she and Jack have some amazing chemistry.
For all his virtuosity on the guitar, Jack is little better than an ape at the piano. Don't know if this was purposeful loose playing to adhere to some sort of raw ethos, but he was terrible at the keys.

It was a great show, though. Those two sure know how to make some noise.

9.29.05
Oh, and Meg White really can't sing.

9.30.05
God, I need to stop buying Ryan Adams records. I just keep getting sucked in by the possibility that he'll be able to put together another magical effort like Pneumonia, his last record with Whiskeytown.