notes - archives - april 2006

4.3.06
I was planning to go pick up the Fiery Furnaces' Bitter Tea this weekend, since it was originally scheduled for release last Tuesday, but it has apparently been pushed back to April 18. <sigh>

Oh well. At least the new Flaming Lips is out tomorrow, and there are rumors that the Islands' Return to the Sea, the debut album from from former members of the Unicorns, will be released as well. That would be a nice birthday surprise, but so far I haven't been able to pin down an exact release date.

4.4.06
Let's hope iTunes releases some decent exclusives today, because I got me a birthday gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket thanks to Sliced Tongue. I could always go with the Eels live record that includes more tracks on the downloadable version than on the CD, but I'd rather use something like this to buy a smattering of singles and EPs.

4.5.06
Yesterday I used a Christmas gift certificate to pick myself up a few birthday CDs: the Flaming Lips' At War With the Mystics, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Show Your Bones, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness' Fear Is On Our Side, Mates of State's Bring It Back, Tapes 'n Tapes' The Loon, and last but not least, the Islands' Return to the Sea. Being an obsessive Unicorns fan, just getting my hands of that final CD would have been enough, but I'm pretty happy to have the rest of them as well.

4.6.06
Most people seem to be pretty evenly divided about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' sophomore CD, Show Your Bones, thinking either the band has sold out and sucks now or that they took a great leap forward with the cleaner production and more varied textures. I've only listened to the disc a couple of times at this point, but I think I'm going to fall into the second camp.

4.7.06
I wasn't sure if Tapes 'n Tapes were going to live up to the hype they've been getting, especially after listening to a few songs clips on iTunes, but I decided to give them a try anyway because...well, just because. And I couldn't be more pleased: The Loon is a great little album, maybe the first great album of 2006. The Islands are calling me, but I keep going back to Tapes 'n Tapes.

4.10.06
Not sure exactly what's wrong with the new Flaming Lips, but I definitely haven't taken to it like I did their last two. Of course, the Soft Bulletin took a few listens before I started to appreciate it, so At War With the Mystics could still turn around for me, but I was really looking forward to this record, and after only a couple of listens, I'm ready to move on. Part of it is that Wayne Coyne's voice just doesn't sound like Wayne Coyne, but that's only part of it. I don't know; it either sounds like they're trying too hard or not trying hard enough.

4.11.06
This is how much my wife, who listens to the same music I do pretty much as often as I do, actually pays attention to what's she's listening to (keep in mind that Wolf Parade made my top 10 albums list last year for Apologies to the Queen Mary and also came out with my favorite single of the year, "I'll Believe in Anything"):

Me: Ooh! Wolf Parade is coming to Baltimore next weekend!

Her: [Pause] Who's Wolf Parade?

<sigh>

4.12.06
You know another thing I hate about the smug bastards at Pitchfork? They're penchant for reviewing records weeks or months removed from their US release dates.

There are two categories: the first is when, due to what I can only assume is internal squabbling or apathy on the part of the reviewer assigned to a particular record, the site reviews a record long after it has been released, meaning that the publicity generated by the review doesn't coincide with all of the other publicity that goes along with an album's release and reduces the chance for the band to create a critical mass that will bring their music to a wider audience. The most egregious example of this so far in 2006 was the Gossip's Standing in the Way of Control, which was released in January but which didn't get a review on Pitchfork until March.

The second type of review is even more annoying, and happens when the site reviews a record on its UK release date, which can be anywhere from a week or two before the US release date (like the Streets' new record, which was reviewed this week on Pitchfork even though it won't be out in the US until April 25) to several months (the Arab Strap's latest, The Last Romance, came out in the US in late February, but Pitchfork reviewed it last October immediately after its release in the UK). So you go to the Pitchfork site, see that an artist you like has a new record, and then realize that the reason you hadn't noticed it on the release schedule before is because it's not actually due to be released domestically for quite some time.

In this case, a glowing review might actually be worse for a band than a bad one; if the review is bad, then in all likelihood you'll have forgotten about it by the time the record is actually available. You'll also likely have forgotten a great review at that point, meaning that a review that could have swayed you to give a new artist a try goes to waste because by the time you can get the product, there's no review reminding you why you should buy it.

Let's get it straight, kids. You live in Chicago. Your readers are primarily American. No matter how much you want to put yourselves in competition with NME, it's just not going to happen. Get over it and start tailoring your review schedule around when a record is actually available to your audience.

4.13.06
I'm not sure that I agree with/understand all the points this guy is making, but this line is a great update of Sartre's classic line: Hell is other people's music. Preach it, brother.

4.14.06
So, yeah...the Islands=/=the Unicorns. I've given Return to the Sea a few days to settle in, because it took me awhile to really love the Unicorns, but there's just too much empty space in the Islands record (whereas with the Unicorns, each song was jam-packed with ideas——it often felt like they could have unravelled them a bit and gotten 2-3 songs out of one of their songs).

Return to the Sea is a decent little record, and it has some real gems on it (the unintentionally ironically named "Rough Gem", "Jogging Gorgeous Summer", and "Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby" are three of my current favorites), but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to fall in love with it like I did Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?

4.17.06
My music collection is getting so big now that I have a real fear that there are great songs, songs that I once loved, that I have forgotten about and that I'll never hear again.

4.18.06
Today is finally Bitter Tea day. I just hope I can steal away from campus long enough to pick it up.

4.19.06
It's surprising that iTunes hasn't done this before now: they just unveiled a playlist that compiles many of the songs that have been used in commercials over the past several months, which also includes notes about which ad campaign each song goes with. I'm not sure who would actually buy this whole playlist, other than someone who's so inept at picking their own music that they figure the only way they can look hip is to let the ad execs pick their songs for them, but it's nice to have that information compiled in one place. I'd really be impressed if they had gone all the way back to the Volkswagon series that used Stereolab and Nick Drake to promote the new Beetle, which I think is what started this whole trend of using contemporary but often little-known songs for major ad campaigns.

4.20.06
Here's hoping that Pitchfork's news department's uncanny ability to answer my questions comes true this time:

So, I wonder what Modest Mouse has been up to recently?

4.21.06
No news on Modest Mouse from Pitchfork yesterday, but they did have a few details on the long-overdue next album from Sparklehorse. So I guess that counts for something.

4.24.06
It always seems like bands save their killer tracks for the album openers, middle of the album revitalizers (which in the pre-CD era would have been the opening track on side 2 of the record or cassette), or the closers. But so far, the only track from Mates of State's Bring It Back that I just can't get enough of is track 8, "So Many Ways". It's a pretty decent album otherwise, and there's still a good chance more songs will jump out at me as I get more familiar with them, but that one had me from the first listen.

4.25.06
For those of you who haven't seen this yet, Plan 9 Music (whose owner was also a co-owner of World of Mirth with the Harveys) has released a complilation CD of Bryan Harvey's recordings from his earliest days with the Dads to his unreleased solo recordings and side projects like Poi Boi and NRG Krysys.

I'm almost ready to tell the story of some of the solo recordings that Bryan sent to me with the intention that they be made available to his fans, but I want to make sure I do this right. So it will be a few more days, but it's coming soon.

4.26.06
After Sliced Tongue's post about the Translators a couple of days ago (a band from the 80s I'd never heard of before he wrote about them), I considered using the iTunes gift certificate he gave me for my birthday to buy their best-of album. But then Tuesday came and among the exclusives released that day were EPs by both the Decemberists (Picaresquities) and the Arctic Monkeys (Who the Fuck Are the Arctic Monkeys?), so I decided use the gift certificate on those instead. The Translators will get some consideration at a later date, but I just couldn't pass up these two releases, especially given the recent lack of good exclusives on the iTunes music store.

4.27.06
It still feels like there's a lot of fluff on the new Flaming Lips record, At War With the Mystics, but some of the tracks, like "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song", "Free Radicals", and "The W.A.N.D." are among my favorite tracks from the band. Oddly enough, though, "Mr. Ambulance Driver", the track that most reviewers gush over, annoys the hell out of me. It's a good basic song, but I just can't get past the sirens, which are way up in the mix and which are present for way too much of the track.

4.28.06
Picked up a few new discs yesterday: the Drive-By Truckers' A Blessing and A Curse, the Starlight Mints' Drowaton, Loose Fur's Born Again in the USA, the Streets' The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living, and the Fiery Furnaces' Bitter Tea. No real impressions so far except that the new Truckers album sounds a lot better than their last one, which was their first disappointing outing. Here's hoping Blessing will continue to impress as a return to form.