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september 2008
9.2.08
Picked up a few new discs over the weekend: Stereolab's Chemical Chords, the Walkmen's You & Me, Ra Ra Riot's The Rhumb Line, and the Notwist's The Devil, You + Me.
Chemical Chords could be the record that I've been waiting my whole life for Stereolab to make, like Sonic Youth's Sonic Nurse: accessible enough for a pop addict like me to embrace completely, and nuanced enough to still be true to their longtime fans/compositional style.
Either way, I'm hoping to see their show at the 9:30 at the end of the month——they absolutely blew me away when I saw them a couple of years ago. I'm still not sure if my work schedule will allow me to go, but I'm going to do everything I can to be there. |
9.3.08
The Walkmen's latest, You & Me, was the last of the discs that I bought over the weekend that I listened to, I think because I was so desperately hoping for another great album (I love Bows and Arrows) after the glowing Pitchfork review, but I was dreading another average one (I didn't care as much for Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone, despite a few great tracks, and I found A Hundred Miles Off to be wholly mediocre).
So far, though, You & Me is impressing, even though I had steeled myself for it to be unremarkable. It's got a different vibe than any of their previous records——I mean, it's still the Walkmen, there's no mistaking their sound——but that boozy, end of the party, end of the night sound they're so good at doesn't sound as worn and lifeless as it did on A Hundred Miles Off.
There aren't really any of the barn burners (relative to the Walkmen's laconic style) like Bows and Arrows' "Little House of Savages" and "The Rat", and there's an eerie quiet that blankets the entire affair, but in the context of the whole record, it works——it sounds unified and purposeful in a way that their last record didn't.
It could be that I'm just in the mood for a record like this with summer ending and fall coming on, so we'll see if my affection for it lasts, but I'm pretty happy to have what seems to be a second killer Walkmen record in my hands. |
9.4.08
Best line so far this year: "Remember, the good lies win", from the Notwist's "Good Lies" (off of The Devil, You + Me). |
9.5.08
For the past couple of weeks, it seemed like I was able to fit fewer and fewer songs onto my 8 gig iPhone, even though the amount of space taken up by software, applications, and photos remained relatively constant. Then I figure it out: the past 10 albums or so that I had imported into iTunes had come in as uncompressed AIFF files instead of 128kb AAC files, meaning that they were taking up 5 gigs of space instead of 500 megs.
I think this happened when I had to convert the bonus track from the Hold Steady's Stay Positive into AIFF so I could import that into GarageBand and break it up into its three component songs——I must have forgotten to set the importer back to AAC when I was finished. I had to reimport all the CDs as AAC, but luckily it keeps all the metadata (play count, rating, etc.) and just replaces the old AIFF files with the new AAC ones. So all is well now. |
9.8.08
I got a serious jones for Julian Cope over the weekend, so I loaded most everything in my collection into iTunes that wasn't already there——Autogeddon, Skellington, My Nation Underground, Jehovahkill, Peggy Suicide, and World Shut Your Mouth (20 Mothers, Saint Julian, and Fried had already been ripped).
I left out Interpreter, because I don't have any good memories of that album (or any memories at all, really), and there's quite enough weirdness to go around on the stuff that I added. I'll do it someday because I'm a completist, but for now, I'm going to enjoy getting to know Jehovahkill and Peggy Suicide again. |
9.9.08
I can't figure out if the Walkmen's "Flamingos (for Colbert)" has anything to do with Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, and if the internet has the answer, it's not giving it up easy. It drives me a little crazier every time I see the song title. |
9.10.08
iTunes 8 was released yesterday alongside revamped iPods, and the biggest changes I've noticed so far are a new way to view album covers in a grid (yay?) and the Genius feature, which uploads your library and metadata (how many times you've played a particular song, your ratings, etc.) into a cloud of the same data from other iTunes users. Apple then combines all of this data to recommend other songs to you that you might like.
So basically it's like Last.fm, and it might have seemed really impressive to me if I didn't already know about and weren't already using Last.fm. But I'm betting a lot of iTunes users don't know about Last.fm, so I expect it really will seem like a genius feature to them.
I have some quibbles with it, of course——first, there is a section called Top Songs You're Missing, which are recommendations for tracks by the artist you've selected. Problem is, half the time it seems to be recommending songs that are already in my iTunes library, which is kind of annoying but which seems fixable. But really, if I'm already familiar with this artist enough to have purchased songs by them, do you really need to recommend more songs to me by that same artist? Seems like wasted real estate.
I've also spent a decent amount of time listening to clips of the recommended songs by other artists, and so far I haven't found a single one that I'd like to purchase or hear more of. It doesn't mean I won't at some point, but I was excited about this at first and now I'm finding it to be more of a waste of time. Maybe the recommendations will improve as more people upload their data to the cloud, so I'll revisit this feature in a couple of weeks and see if I get better results. |
9.12.08
The Faint's Fasciinatiion is seriously becoming my favorite record of the year. I didn't really expect that, especially given the superfluous vowels in the title. Things like that can get under my skin to an unreasonable degree sometimes, but I love this record so much I'm just trying not to think about it. |
9.15.08
I'm not digging the Futureheads' This Is Not the World nearly as much as I did News and Tributes, but I don't know exactly why. Could just be a mood thing. Maybe it will take when I'm in a more positive frame of mind. |
9.16.08
I don't own a ton of the Mekons' catalog and I only find myself listening to them occasionally (although if I had been introduced to them at a different time in my musical life I wouldn't be surprised to find them one of my favorite bands of all time), but I was listening to them the other day and was struck by how much the male singer sounded like David Byrne. I had never heard the resemblance before, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to listen to them again without that popping into my head. |
9.17.08
I still can't figure out how and when Last.fm decides to upload scrobbles from my iPhone. But it seems to eventually get most of my plays. |
9.18.08
Ra Ra Riot isn't nearly as raucous as their name would suggest, but I'm slowly falling for The Rhumb Line. I keep hearing elements of Vampire Weekend in the music, but more Canadian, if that makes any sense (and I have no clue whether Ra Ra Riot are Canadian or not). And without the whole African influence——just straight indie pop with some strings on the side. |
9.19.08
I've loved "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" since the first time I heard it, but I'm coming to believe it might be the best song ever written. |
9.29.08
I had originally been planning to take off on Wednesday so I could go see Stereolab on Tuesday night, but given the way things are going at work, I don't think I'll be able to go now. The scanning and input training on our new document management system for our operations staff was originally planned for today and the official golive planned for tomorrow, but now the training has been pushed back to Wednesday, and although I don't technically have to be there, I think it would be a mistake to be out of the office that day. And since I'm too old to stay out until 2 a.m. and still put in a productive workday the next day, I don't think that Stereolab is going to happen this time.
Which is a real shame——they blew me away when I saw them live a year and a half ago, and their new record, Chemical Chords, is sitting pretty well with me. |
9.30.08
I had an entry all composed in my head as I was falling asleep, and I was sorely tempted to go type it up, but something in my brain said, "No, you'll remember this, just take your nap and write it later." And of course now it's completely gone; I can't even remember the general topic. |
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