11.1.10
I have done something very foolish: I bought an electric guitar.

11.2.10

Mixtape: 1988

Track 19
"Chains"
Clam Dip and Other Delights
Soul Asylum

Poor Soul Asylum. They're seen as a joke now, going from rags to riches to rags again during the ridiculous alternative gold rush of the 90s, but at one time, they were legitimate critical favorites and indie upstarts with a passionate fan base. They were the mutant love child of Hüsker Dü and the Replacements (their first two releases were produced by Bob Mould, but the deeper the band moved into their career, the less they sounded like the Hüskers and the more like a tighter, more traditional rock version of the Replacements).

Their most successful album, Grave Dancers Union, was supposed to be their last; they band had for all intents and purposes broken up, but they owed one more album to the record company, and rather than pay back a portion of their advance they decided to crank out one more release. But it was 1992, and the feeding frenzy by both the radio programmers and the record buying public for any scruffy guitar-based alternative band gave the band renewed exposure that led to hit singles "Black Gold" and "Runaway Train" while selling over three million copies of Grave Dancers Union.

But their greatest triumph was also their undoing, because the mainstream audience that made them stars didn't stay with them after the fad period was over (the follow up to Grave Dancers, Let Your Dim Light Shine, went platinum, but after that their records basically stopped selling), and their core audience didn't stick around for shenanigans like Dave Pirner's tabloid-worthy relationship with Winona Ryder and a general shift in the direction of the band's music.

My first exposure to the band was through the full length Hang Time, which was also released in 1988. I must have been in quite the mood back in 2005 when I chose this track from the EP that was released after Hang Time, Clam Dip and Other Delights, because usually if it's a choice between an interesting but oddball EP or the first album I loved by a particular band to represent them for a given year's mixtape, I'm certain I'd choose a track from the album 99% of the time.

But "Chains" is one of my favorites, even though it's perhaps not the best representative for the band. Although, really, you could say that about a lot of their songs. That's the thing: you know a song is by Soul Asylum the second you hear it, but it's hard to pin down what they were, exactly. And maybe that's why, for a time, in between their attempt to become a Hüsker Dü cover band that happened to write their own material and when they became temporary major rock stars, I loved them in a way that only a smart, introverted teenager trying to figure out just exactly who he's going to be when he grows up can love a bunch of surprisingly literate smartasses who play in a band so they can pretend that they don't really care about anything.

11.3.10
The Decemberists announced that they'll have a new album coming out in January called The King Is Dead, and they'll let you download the first single, "Down By the Water", now by entering your email address into the widget below:

This is a pretty straightforward song by recent Decemberists standards, and I'm pretty encouraged by what I know about the album so far: 10 tracks, the lead single would fit in fine on their earlier albums, and no hint so far that this is any sort of prog rock concept album.

I've been waiting for another Her Majesty the Decemberists or even Picaresque for a long time, and while The Crane Wife and The Hazards of Love had their charms, they also had their pain points that you had to endure for the sake of the concept. An album of ten new Decemberists songs of average length that aren't tied together by some grand theme is exactly what I want, and I'm hoping that the time they spent on the road with seasoned pop vets like Peter Buck (who guests on "Down By the Water") and Robyn Hitchcock might have rubbed off on them.

11.4.10

Mixtape: 1988

Track 20
"If I Was a Mekon"
Son of Sam I Am
Too Much Joy

There's something about Art Brut that reminds me of Too Much Joy——both bands share a not terribly great singer (I mean, in terms of singing——in terms of the personality they bring to the band, they're perfect), both use solid if not very original rock riffs as the basis for their songs, and there's something about each band that makes you question, when you're first getting to know them, whether they're a real band or sort of a joke, and whether you're going to be able to tolerate them for more than one album.

With Too Much Joy, that answer is yes, but just barely. I loved Son of Sam I Am (Too Much Joy are more willfully punny than Art Brut, both in their album titles and their lyrics) and its follow up, Cereal Killers, but didn't feel anything at all for Mutiny and stopped following the band's career after that (Art Brut also currently have two great albums and a middling third under their belt; I'm hoping they'll find a way to bounce back with their next release).

Son of Sam I Am is definitely the better record, before they got signed by a major label and started having dreams of being genuine rock stars (singer Tim Quirk——could he have a better last name for a band like this?——is recently famous for his essay about just how badly major labels screw the artists and how new streams of revenue from digital tracks just offer another opportunity for the labels to play games with the royalty checks). Their cover of L.L. Cool J's "That's a Lie" is one of the best hip-hop to rock covers in existence, but "If I Was a Mekon" gets the nod here because really, is there anything cooler than a song about the Mekons?

11.5.10
Corin Tucker's solo debut, 1,000 Years, has a different vibe than a Sleater-Kinney record——more mellow, more eclectic——but I'd be surprised if Sleater-Kinney fans didn't like it. After all, her voice is the voice of Sleater-Kinney to me (despite Carrie Brownstein sharing the vocal duties in that group), and the guitar is still the signature instrument. If it's going to be another few years before Sleater-Kinney comes off hiatus and makes another album, I'd be happy to have a couple more solo releases from Corin Tucker like this one from to tide us over.

11.8.10
So of course, now that I've convinced myself to buy music from the monthly Amazon 100 $5 MP3 album downloads, they give me the worst month I've seen since I became aware of this program. The only album I can strongly recommend is Arcade Fire's Funeral, and the only thing I'm buying myself is Magnetic Fields' The Charm of the Highway Strip (after buying its predecessor, Holiday, for $5 last month).

11.9.10
I haven't written anything about Belle & Sebastian's Belle & Sebastian Write About Love since I got it, and that's because, well...meh.

11.10.10
Kid Cudi's second album, Man On The Moon II: The Legend Of Mr. Rager, showed up in yesterday's mail, and so far, I'm kind of lukewarm about it. But I was lukewarm about his debut for a few weeks, and then something clicked and it became one of my favorite albums released in 2009. So I'm definitely going to stick this out for a few listens.

11.11.10
Yes, Marnie Stern is an amazing guitarist. But would her music be anywhere near as good if she didn't have a drummer who could keep up with her? It's some miracle of the universe that those two found each other.

11.12.10
I can't figure out why Pitchfork hasn't reviewed Kid Cudi's Man on the Moon II given that it came out last week and they gave high marks to his debut. The only thing I can figure is that there's some ethical thing going on because they've been running a huge ad for the album on the front page of the site for a couple of weeks and they don't want to seem biased by giving it a good review while that impossible-to-miss ad is running. But I don't think that's ever stopped them before...

11.15.10
I finally gave in and decided to listen to "Impossible Soul", the 25 minute closing track from Sufjan Stevens' latest effort, The Age of Adz, and man, was that a mistake. Autotune? Really Sufjan? Ugh...

There's a nice bit that starts in minute 14 and lasts until about minute 19, but other than those five minutes, this track is a colossal waste of time, and I feel foolish for having given it a chance.

11.16.10
Despite the near-universal acclaim, I've resisted buying a Girl Talk album, even when one was on sale for $5 on Amazon, because what I'd heard sounded a little too frat-rock for my tastes. But when he offered his latest, All Day, as a free download, I decided to give it a listen.

And, well...it's a little too frat-rock for me. I recognize a ton of the samples——most of the alt/indie stuff is in my music collection——but it's just a little too amped for my tastes. Still, if you want to give it a try yourself, the download is here.

11.17.10
I didn't expect this, but the new Wavves album, King of the Beach, is really growing on me. There were a few songs that I liked right away, but the ones that showed stylistic growth were ripoffs of Animal Collective, which I had to dislike a little just on principle (not that I dislike Animal Collective, I just dislike other artists aping them).

But the more I've listened, the more I've found to like, from the production (Dennis Herring brought a lot of atmosphere with his work on the boards, and he also recorded it at a level that matches other albums released recently, instead of the speaker-blowing volume that Nathan self-recorded the last album at) to the actual songwriting. Yes, there's still too much copying of Animal Collective, especially later in the disc, but at least he's using their style on some pretty decent songs.

11.18.10
I bought the Books' latest, The Way Out, for $5 when it was one of the Amazon monthly MP3 specials, and I'm so glad I didn't pay any more for it than that. I've always liked the Books, but I wondered if we'd heard every original thought we were going to hear from them after three albums, and I was reluctant to pay full price for another one despite the positive reviews.

But that's not the problem with this record. Instead, they've gone too far in the other direction, desperately groping for newness by incoporating more electronica and faster, more intense beats, and it just doesn't work. I've only been able to force myself to listen to this record once, and I'll probably do it once more just to be sure before I file it away forever, but there wasn't a single second of it I liked, and that's after liking the bulk of what they've done so far in their career.

11.19.10
So the National is reissuing High Violet, their latest album that they just released earlier this year, in a special expanded edition that includes four new studio tracks from the High Violet sessions, an alternate take of the opening track, "Terrible Love", and three live tracks. And I just have to ask: why couldn't they have just released all the new material on a companion EP, rather than "reissuing" a record that just came out and is likely still on store shelves from the original release?

I really only want the four new studio tracks, and possibly the alternate version of "Terrible Love", so I'm going to end up spending around $4-$5 anyway, the same price that an iTunes EP of leftovers should be priced at (luckily, all of the tracks are available as individual downloads——none are tied to purchasing the whole record). But the whole notion of an expanded reissue within six months of the original release reeks of sticking it to the hardcore fans, because it was clearly the plan all along.

11.22.10
Even though it's not officially out until tomorrow, Amazon delivered Kanye West's new CD, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, to me over the weekend, and it does not disappoint. I was worried that he was starting to run out of creative steam with 808s & Heartbreak, and that his primary function in pop culture would to be a polarizing figure whose antics far outshine his artistic output. But I don't think that's going to be the case——this album is really something else, and it's going to take me awhile to write up a proper review of it.

11.23.10
We got a new car, and like many new cars these days, it comes with satellite radio built-in and a free three month trial. There are four or five stations that play alt/indie stuff, and it's a lot better than the normal radio, so we'll probably end up transferring our account to that car and adding computer/iPhone playback for an extra $3 per month (right now my wife has a portable receiver that she uses at work to listen to music during the day, but the computer playback can replace that).

It can be a little repetitive, though——in a few hours of listening on the current stations, I've heard some songs four or five times. But maybe that's just the way radio works——it's been so long since I listened to the radio for music that I don't know how often you can expect to hear recent popular songs.

I will say, though, that it's a little odd that I've heard the Flaming Lips' "This Here Giraffe", from their 1995 record Clouds Taste Metallic, three or four times already, and all on the station that's supposed to be playing contemporary stuff. Granted, it's a great song, but I don't understand why it's being played on that particular channel with such frequency.

11.29.10
So Iron and Wine is doing the whole electronic thing on the next album. Huh. I guess we'll see how that works out in a couple of months.

11.30.10
We're entering the doldrums of the music release calendar again, with nothing I'm interested in being release for another 6-8 weeks. Time to turn my attention back to the mixtape series again...