7.1.14
Not so many $5 MP3 albums from Amazon this fortnight that I'm interested in purchasing, but a ton of great records worth owning if you don't already have them. Here are the lists:

Must-haves: Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.a.a.d city, Pearl Jam's Ten, Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Graduation, Kid Cudi's Man on the Moon, Spoon's Kill the Moonlight, the Replacements' Tim, Rage Against the Machine's The Battle of Los Angeles, Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, the Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground, the Stone Roses' The Stone Roses, R.E.M.'s Murmur, Iggy Pop's Lust for Life, Melvins' Stag, Queen Latifah's All Hail the Queen, and the Faint's Danse Macabre.

Recommended: Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream, Michael Jackson's Off the Wall, Cloud Nothings' Here and Nowhere Else, Massive Attack's Mezzanine, Beastie Boys' Ill Communication, Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True, Soundgarden's Louder Than Love, Sting's ...Nothing Like the Sun, Tokyo Police Club's Forcefield, the Decemberists' The Crane Wife, and Q-Tip's The Renaissance.

I might buy: Brian Wilson's Imagination, Massive Attack's Protection, Guns n' Roses' G N' R Lies, Perfect Pussy's Say Yes to Love, Abba's Abba Gold, and Happy Mondays' Yes Please.

7.2.14
Southpaw Grammar is a pretty terrific album title, but it's wasted on a not-so-good album.

7.3.14
Robyn Hitchcock has a new album coming out later this summer called The Man Upstairs, and he recently shared the first track, a cover of the Psychedelic Furs' "The Ghost in You":

I own most of Hitchcock's catalog, whether as a solo artist, with backing groups like the Egyptians or the Venus 3, or as part of the Soft Boys, and I don't recall him including covers as part of his recorded work, but this one is quite lovely.

The album is apparently going to be a mix of original material and covers, which could be dangerous: if all the covers are as good as this one, his new material is going to have to be very good to stand up next to them.

7.7.14
Death from Above 1979, who broke up a couple of years after releasing the critically acclaimed You're a Woman, I'm a Machine in 2004, have announced that they are reforming and releasing a new album called The Physical World. Recently they shared a track from that record, "Trainwreck 1979".

This is not as hard and fast as the material on Machine, but it's still very much in their style. It might trend a little too much towards the mainstream for my taste, however——you could have told me that this was the result of the Black Keys working with Danger Mouse and going for a more metal sound and I probably would have believed you.

Still, I'm excited about this record, and there's almost no way I won't be buying it.

7.8.14
Here is how Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction is just like Duran Duran's classic Rio: although there is a consistent style to each record, there are really only a handful of great songs, and even those great songs are mostly great when it comes to the chorus part of the song.

I never owned Appetite for Destruction when it originally came out, but I've become more interested in the music that was played on the radio in the 80s, so it was a pretty easy decision to pick up this record for $5 when it was on sale on Amazon. I already knew that I'd like "Welcome to the Jungle", "Paradise City", and "Sweet Child O' Mine" (which are the songs that drove me to buy the album in the first place), but I expected that I would like at least a couple more.

But of all the other tracks, the only one that I rated above three stars was the closer, "Rocket Queen", and even that one barely made the cut because it's at least two minutes too long. Given that result, it would have been cheaper for me to buy the indivudual songs from iTunes, but I had to know for sure what the whole album sounded like.

7.9.14
The Wave Pictures have now become so prolific and simultaneously so wanting of a US fanbase that the only way you can get their newest music is through the online services——no physical releases in the US, and no real US label that I can discern. And even though their hit/miss ration is way, way off——you might get one good song (and typically it's just good, not great) for every four or so mediocre or worse songs——the moments when they do hit are worth it for me to keep investing in them.

Recently I used iTunes to buy their last full-length, a double album by the name of City Forgiveness, and an EP called Helen that I'm reasonably sure was their contribution to the most recent Record Store Day.

The averages on City Forgiveness are higher than I would have expected——I rated seven of the twenty songs at four stars——but the second LP had only one, meaning that if they had shown any inclination to edit (which they never do——I swear to god they record every musical idea that flits across their brains, and they seem to release everything they record), then they could have had a single LP on which I thought seven out of the ten songs were worthwhile (which is unfortunately turning into a high average even for bands that I think typically work at a much higher quality level).

The Helen EP, which has only six songs, is about an even split between good songs and average songs, but as a whole entity it's much more listenable than the bloated double album. Which leads me to wonder: would this be a better band if it just released EPs? Does some of the bloat come from just hanging around the studio for too long and adding too much stuff that really doesn't matter, but hey, we're here and we might as well use the equipment?

I'm not going to defend this band. I'm not going to suggest that you give them a listen. I will tell you that if you do decide to give them a try, you should probably start with Instant Coffee Baby, and that, despite their many, many false starts and red herrings over the course of their career, the track "I Love You Like a Madman" from that record might be the best three minute guitar pop song (and it is fittingly EXACTLY three minutes) written in the past 15 years.

7.10.14
Interpol recently shared "All the Rage Back Home", a track from their upcoming album El Pintor:

I haven't bought an Interpol record since 2007's Our Love to Admire, and I probably haven't listened to any of their music since around that time either (they had fallen so far off my radar that I wasn't aware until reading the press notices for this record that they had released an album in 2010), but I like this song, and it might be time to revisit the albums I already have to help me decide whether it might be worth investing in this new record.

7.11.14
Jeff Tweedy has shared another song from the upcoming record he made with his son (being released under the band name Tweedy) called "Summer Noon"

It's easy to imagine this as a solid Wilco track with a slightly different arrangement, and I can't tell if I like it better how it is or how I imagine it would be if Wilco had actually recorded it. It's the drumming, really, courtesy of Tweedy's teenage son: the constant mini-fills and the slightly-out-of-sync syncopated percussion is either brilliant or distracting——it either gives the song some extra texture that leaves it a bit more memorable, or it's trying too hard for that off-the-cuff amateur feeling (a line that some of Wilco's best work from the early part of their career comes close to crossing).

I am interested to see how this record comes out, however——with the current Wilco lineup ([cough] Nels Cline [cough]) I don't think Wilco as a band is capable of relesaing simple, straightforward songs anymore, and although the complexity of the work on Yankee Foxtrot Hotel and A Ghost Is Born (both of which were recorded before Cline joined the band) are still the pinnacle of their recordings, earlier records like Summer Teeth and Being There remain far more charming and interesting than the more overthought work that tended to follow Yankee and Ghost.

(Weird fact that I did not know until I looked up Nels Cline on Wikipedia: he is married to Yuko Honda of Cibo Matto, whose collaboration with then-boyfriend (and son of Beatle John Lennon) Sean Lennon on the track "Into the Sun" eventually led me to discovering the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.)

7.14.14
I swear I had already posted my top albums of 2013, but I can't find any actual evidence of this. So here they are (not ranked, but alpha by artist name).

Reflektor——Arcade Fire
This album is still over-the-top earnest sometimes, but it's also weird and utterly charming in a way that none of their previous releases has been. I'm not sure if I'm totally ready to make up with them just yet, but this record gives me hope that we have a long relationship ahead of us.

Acid Rap——Chance the Rapper
Another stunning rap record that was self-released for free. I hope we don't end up waiting too long for a formal label release, and if it's even 80% as good as this record, it ought to be one of the records of the year in that genre.

MCII——Mikal Cronin
I always believe in my heart that there are great little lo-fi, ramshackle guitar pop records out there that I haven't discovered, so I'm always happy to have that belief validated when I actually find one. He might never record anything as brilliant as In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, but he's the closest thing to a musical successor to Jeff Mangum's Neutral Milk Hotel that I've yet heard.

The Bones of What We Believe——Chvrches
A tough band to sell you on with just a description, because I think we've all had just about enough of 80s-inspired synths with dance beats and a female lead singer, but this band is one of the groups that justifies the existence of the subgenre.

Night Time, My Time——Sky Ferreira
There are times when I wonder, if the first time I had heard one of my favorite songs on this record (say "24 Hours" or "Love in Stereo") was on a mainstream radio station sandwiched in between Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez (note the purely hypothetical nature of this scenario: I never listen to the radio, and I wouldn't know a track by either of these two unless someone else told me), would I still be able to like it? But then I just keep listening and listening and the question answers itself. This is what I think we all hoped mainstream pop music would evolve into by the time my generation reached our adulthood, and while that hasn't happened by a longshot, it's still good to know that hook-y, radio-friendly music that's actually good really exists.

Personal Record——Eleanor Friedberger
I don't love this one quite as much as her first solo record, Last Summer, and I'm dying to see if she and her brother Matthew have another Fiery Furnaces record in them, but I've grown to appreciate the new style of record, especially once I started hearing the echoes of Lou Reed's Transformer in the music and production.

The Electric Lady——Janelle Monae
Love love love this woman. There's still a lot of dross in the form of instrumental interludes, just like on The ArchAndroid, but the actual songs are so great that this fault is easy to ignore (just like on The ArchAndroid). "Dance Apocalyptic" is the best track, but it's hard to ignore "Givin Em What They Love", which features the slinkiest Prince guitar lines since his Purple Rain days.

The Silver Gymnasium——Okkervil River
In a less impressive year, this might have emerged as my favorite record of the year, but if I had to give ranks to all these albums, this one would lag behind Waxahatchee's Cerulean Salt and Kanye West's Yeezus. Still, I love this record, and it's made me fall in love with this band all over again. If this band caught your attention with The Stage Names but then fell off your radar, it's time to pick this one up and remember why they were so compelling.

Pythons——Surfer Blood
Every song sounds like a classic from a non-existent time in the early 90s that might have come to pass if the alternative/college music revolution had gone a little less grunge-y and a little more slacker indie. You have to wonder, if Surfer Blood had come along during that time, would they have become one of the biggest bands on the planet? An equally valid question: why aren't they one of the biggest bands on the planet today?

Small Sound——Tennis
Yes, it's just an EP. But it's a really GREAT EP.

Modern Vampires of the City——Vampire Weekend
I almost couldn't bring myself to include this record, not because it's not a very good record, but because I didn't seem to love it quite as much as everyone else did. If you liked their previous work, you'll like this just fine (and likely find it their best release if the rest of the critical world is to be believed). Still, it definitely belongs on a year-end best-of list——it just doesn't belong at the top of mine.

The Chronicles of Marnia——Marnie Stern
This is her first record without drummer Zach Hill, who has recently been spending his time as half of the avant noise outfit Death Grips, but the replacement does an admirable job of replacing his style, which was integral to Marnie's sound on her earlier records. This is her most consistent and easiest-to-digest record to date, but there's still plenty of the ferocity and strange, abruptly shifting time signatures to keep longtime fans satisfied.

Cerulean Salt——Waxahatchee
Anyone who is reading this list is likely at least an occasional reader of this site, and if that's the case, then you've likely already been subjected to multiple entries espousing my absolute adoration of this album. So I won't make you suffer through any more of them (today, at least).

Yeezus——Kanye West
This album isn't the most fun thing to listen to, but, without admitting to a hardcore bias against rap and hip-hop, it's hard to deny that it's the most innovate, most compelling, and most masterful piece of work in any genre the past year. It's political, funny, angry, and touching, sometimes all within the same song. Instead of burying his ego in the face of constant criticism about his narcissism and inflated sense of self-worth, Kanye exults in it, and he's so on point that there's not really a counter-argument. Over the course of his career, we've watched the Cassius Clay of rap morph into the Muhammed Ali of the genre. His Joe Frazier will find him someday, but right now he's the undisputed champ, the only artist I can think of who has simultaneously embodied his genre and taken it to places that no one else ever thought to.

7.15.14
Okay. So I've sort of come around on Blood Orange's Cupid Deluxe. I think it might be a pretty good album, but only when you're in a very specific mood. The problem for me is that I'm not in that mood very often.

7.16.14
The latest batch of $5 MP3 albums from Amazon, and here are the ones worth looking at. A relatively weak crop on all fronts, but there are still a few items of interest in each category.

Must-haves: Beck's Mellow Gold, the Police's Outlandos d'Amour, Tom Waits' Bone Machine, and Cut Copy's In Ghost Colours.

Recommended: Beck's Sea Change and Odelay, Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News, Rage Against the Machine's Evil Empire, U2's War, Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, the Decemberists' The King Is Dead, The Crane Wife, and The Hazards of Love, R.E.M.'s Document, Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and Transference, Bob Mould's The Silver Age, and Big Country's The Crossing.

I might buy: Caribou's Andorra, Cibo Matto's Viva! La Woman, Yellow Ostrich's Cosmos, and Social Distortion's Social Distortion.

7.17.14
of Montreal recently released a digital version of "Jigsaw Puzzle", the song they released as part of Record Store Day this year, and despite my dislike for their last album, I still love this band so much that I couldn't resist buying it.

It's definitely in the same vein as the songs on Lousy With Sylvanbriar, which is to say that it's a return to the 60s-inspired, psychedelic-infused, sun-soaked pop of their earliest releases, except "Jigsaw Puzzle" is actually pretty good; if it had been included on the album, it easily would have been the best track.

(In the context of their overall career, it's still no more than a middling track, but Kevin Barnes has written so many great tracks that even his middling tracks are worth paying attention to.)

The b-side was a remix of Sylvanbriar's "Triumph of Disintegration", which reimagines the track along the lines of the complex but naturalistic production of the band's previous album, Paralytic Stalks, and it's much better for this treatment. I like this version of it so much that I revisited the album version, but that track still left me cold. So now I'm wondering if all of Sylvanbriar should be remixed and turned into an album that might actually be worth listening to...

7.18.14
So, Amazon, I ordered Morrissey's new album, World Peace Is None of Your Business, about a month before it came out, depending on your guaranteed delivery by the day of release. As of Tuesday, when the album was released, the shipping status said "Guaranteed Delvery by 8:00 P.M.", but when I got home around 6:00, and it hadn't been delivered and I knew that it wouldn't be——we never see the delivery drivers after around 6 or so.

On Wednesday, the shipping was updated to out for delivery, but when I got home, still no delivery. Later that night, the shipping status was updated to "Transferred to USPS for Home Delivery", meaning that UPS, the company you originally contracted with to get my package to me on time, simply pawned it off on another service and started the delivery clock all over again. On Thursday, the shipping status was still saying that it was in the hands of the USPS, but no package came, and you can understand why I might be doubtful that it will be delivered today.

True, you offered a free digital download with the purchase of the CD, and since I listen in digital formats almost exclusively these days, I've had access to the music since the day of release. But that's not really the point: I was guaranteed delivery of the physical object by Tuesday, and here it is Friday and I still don't have it (I have a feeling I would have been better off ordering it the day of release——I can almost guarantee that I would have had it in my hands by Thursday at the latest). And in a final insult, the estimated delivery for the item still says July 15.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about being an Amazon customer these days——their prices are typically among the best that you'll get for any items ordered online, digital or physical, but I don't like their monopolistic tactics, their strong-arm tactics with local and federal government to avoid paying taxes, or how they treat workers at some of their warehouses. The thing that makes it hard to sever ties with them is that they are the best in the world at rapid fulfillment——they reliable get your orders to you quickly and cheaply. If that part of the bargain disappears, it becomes much easier to see myself as only an occasional customer of Amazon for online purchases.

7.21.14
It has been nearly three years since I last posted anything from my mixtape series, finishing off writing about 1988 and posting the tracklist for 1989. I'm back on track with this project, though, so here is the intro to the 1989 mixtape followed by a reposting of the tracklist:

Mixtape: 1989

1989 was a weird year. It saw the release of three unquestionably classic albums——the Cure's Disintegration, the Pixies' Doolittle, and the Stone Roses' eponymous debut——along with several last gasps from 80s artists who would never quite break through to the mainstream (Guadalcanal Diary, Fetchin' Bones, XTC, Camper Van Beethoven, etc.) and some strong early records from artists who would go on to dominate the sound of the 90s (Soundgarden and Nine Inch Nails).

I don't often find that separating music by decades is useful for anything other than an arbitrary break and an easy way to divide up musical hisory along more traditional historical lines, but it really does feel like there was a seismic shift between the 80s and the 90s that starts in 1989 and ends with Nirvana's domination of the musical landscape in 1991. As a result, all three years in the span are a bit of a hodgepodge as some trends and scenes were dying off and others were springing to life. All in all one of the better years for music, though.

1. "Love Crushing"
   Monster
   Fetchin' Bones
   
   
2. "Club Mekon"
   Rock 'n' Roll
   The Mekons
   
   
3. "5 More Minutes"
   Spin The World
   Royal Crescent Mob
   
   
4. "Latifah's Law"
   All Hail The Queen
   Queen Latifah
   
   
5. "Waterfall"
   The Stone Roses
   The Stone Roses
   
   
6. "You're The One Lee"
   Me And Mr. Ray
   Miracle Legion
   
   
7. "You Keep It All In"
   Welcome To The Beautiful South
   The Beautiful South
   
   
8. "The Mayor Of Simpleton"
   Oranges & Lemons
   XTC
   
   
9. "Always Saturday"
   Flip-Flop
   Guadalcanal Diary
   
   
10. "End of the Day"
    End of the Day
    The Reivers
    
    
11. "Broken Bones"
    Tantilla
    House Of Freaks
    
    
12. "Down All The Days"
    Peace And Love
    The Pogues
    
    
13. "Pictures of You"
    Disintegration
    The Cure
    
    
14. "Terrible Lie"
    Pretty Hate Machine
    Nine Inch Nails
    
    
15. "Hands All Over"
    Louder Than Love
    Soundgarden
    
    
16. "Wave Of Mutilation"
    Doolittle
    The Pixies
    
    
17. "See A Little Light"
    Workbook
    Bob Mould
    
    
18. "June"
    Key Lime Pie
    Camper Van Beethoven
    
    
19. "Sleepwalk"
    Earthquake Weather
    Joe Strummer

7.22.14

Mixtape: 1989

Track 1
"Love Crushing"
Monster
Fetchin' Bones

To kick of the 1989 mixtape, I was debating between two songs: Fetchin' Bones' "Love Crushing" and the Sidewinders' "Witchdoctor", and in the end I went with the local band (Fetchin' Bones are from my home state of North Carolina). 1989 would find both bands at their most relevant and with their biggest chance for success, and neither would quite make it. Fetchin' Bones would break up after failing to break into the mainstream, while the Sidewinders would go on to release a few more albums (although only one more under the Sidewinders name; legal challenges to the name caused them to rename themselves the Sand Rubies). But neither band would come as close to success as they did with these albums, and you get the sense that if they had released these albums 3-5 years later, their stories could have turned out much differently.

"Love Crushing" is the perfect power pop stomper to open a record called Monster (and in case you're wondering, Fetchin' Bones' Monster is much better than R.E.M.'s). At the time this record's guitar sounds were seen as almost metal-ish when compared to what else was popular on college radio (and even to the band's own catalog up to that point), but listening to it now, it almost has an overproduced studio pop sheen to it. That's not to say it's not a good album——it's likely the best collection of songs the band ever recorded, and while "Love Crushing" is clearly the standout, the are several other single-worthy tracks here.

I never got to see the band live, even though they played around Durham and Chapel Hill all the time in the late 80s, and that's something I regret——they had a great reputation as a live band, and it's likely I would have become a fan sooner if I had the chance to see them play a show.

7.23.14

Mixtape: 1989

Track 2
"Club Mekon"
Rock 'n' Roll
The Mekons

At the time this album was released, I was aware of the Mekons as a group with reverent followers (some of whom were among my friends at the time) and a near-legendary reputation, but I didn't become personally acquainted with the band or this album until many years later. (At the time, I was most familiar with the band in the context of the Too Much Joy song "If I Was a Mekon", which waxed rhapsodic about how perfect the world would be if only they were members of this sprawling music/art collective. This didn't tell me much about the band's music, but it did underscore the fanatical devotion of the band's followers.)

It was a mistake not to get to know the Mekons sooner, because this is a brilliant album, and out of many good choices, this is probably the best song. Not only is it ridculously listenable, combining the best of post punk guitar work, pop melodies, and alt-country influences, but the lyrics are singable and cool and capable of holding meaning on multiple levels in the way that the best rock lyrics (and poetry) always are. The opening four lines that say more about the good and the bad of rock and roll than scores of dissertations turned in by media studies majors over the past few decades:

When I was just seventeen
Sex no longer held a mystery
I saw it as a commodity
To be bought and sold, like rock 'n' roll

Despite the love I grew to have for this album when I finally gave it a chance years after its release, it did not lead me to a larger exploration of the Mekons catalog (I own only two other of their records, Honky Tonkin' and Journey to the End of Night) even though I love every album of theirs that I've heard. I'm not sure why this is, but I have a nagging feeling that something is missing in my life, and when I listen to their records, it's easy for me to believe that this hole in the world would be filled if only I would plunge deep into the poool of Mekons fandom.

7.24.14

Mixtape: 1989

Track 3
"5 More Minutes"
Spin The World
Royal Crescent Mob

The stories of many of the bands that are on this 1989 mixtape are stories of barely missed connections, of possible superstardom derailed by bad timing. In two years, the popular music world would be turned on its head by Nirvana's Nevermind, which not only led to mainstream success for grunge and other heavy guitar sounds, but for a myriad of bands and sounds that would have been footnotes had the peak of their careers happened just a few years earlier.

The previous two bands definitely fit into this larger narrative——it's easy to see how Fetchin' Bones charismatic singer Hope Nicholls could have led the band to the same heights of success enjoyed by No Doubt, and while the Mekons might not have ever made it as top 40 superstars, it's not hard to believe that, with slightly different timing, they could have ended up like, say, Wilco, who sell lots of records without needing radio/single support and whose large and devoted fanbase allows them to play sold out shows pretty much whenever and wherever they want. And it's even easier to envision success for Royal Crescent Mob, who mine the same sort of rock/pop/funk/punk territory that the Red Hot Chili Peppers built a massive career on——a different single at a different time, and it could be Royal Crescent Mob who turned out to be the big success story and the Red Hot Chili Peppers who turned out to be the interesting footnote.

(I put together this mixtape an embarrassingly long time ago and I'm just now getting around to writing about it, but I don't think it's a coincidence that I'm featuring a song by Royal Crescent Mob on here but not one from the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Mother's Milk, which was also released in 1989 and was their first album that got widespread airplay, setting the stage for the massive hit that would follow it, Blood Sugar Sex Magik. I'll get a chance to write about the Chili Peppers again in this mixtape series, but this is pretty much the end of the line for the RC Mob, and they deserve to be written about.)

I saw Royal Crescent Mob play live several times (mostly at the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill), and I've rarely seen a group command an audience like they did; it was hard to conceive of a universe in which they wouldn't eventually be huge, simply because it was impossible to go to one of their shows and not emerge a fan. "5 More Minutes" is one of their best studio tracks, and of all their studio albums, Spin the World is the most consistent. There would be a few more records before the band petered out in 1994, but it was pretty much all downhill from here. Release this record in 1994 instead of 1989, and we could be living in a world where the greatly inferior Spin Doctors never needed to exist and these guys would have enjoyed a much longer and more fruitful career.

7.25.14

Mixtape: 1989

Track 4
"Latifah's Law"
All Hail The Queen
Queen Latifah

25 years after the release of her debut album, All Hail the Queen, Queen Latifah is well established in contemporary pop culture, mostly as an actress and talk show host. But I would bet that most of her current fans have either forgotten or never knew that she got her start as one of the first significant female rappers who could go toe to toe with the best male hip hop artists of the day.

This record is part feminist manifesto delivered via a rap album, part dance album, and all in all one of the strongest hip hop releases to that point by any rapper, male or female. It's the kind of record that could be the subject of a cultural studies seminar in the classroom and a featured record at a house party later than night, with no tension between those ways of experiencing it. The biggest issue with it from a critical perspective is that Latifah works too much in the established rap tropes of narcissistic self-aggrandizement and constant dissing of her fellow MCs——her talents are so great and so obvious that you find yourself immediately wishing that she had, on her debut album, found a way to transcend the genre in which she'd chosen to work.

Queen Latifah would go on to release several more records (her most recent was released in 2009), but none would be as impactful or just plain good as All Hail the Queen——she had already started to explore how to be a star in other media, and it's clear that rapping was not the only thing she intended to be known for. Yes, today we all know who she is, but in the list of words most people would use to describe her, rapper would come after things like actress, talk show host, and media personality——if it would be used at all (it's telling that when you type her name into iTunes, her movies are displayed above her albums).

In terms of the emerging theme of this mixtape——artists who had huge careers after tastes shifted in 1991 contrasted with those whose timing just wasn't quite right——it's hard to categorize her as anything other than a success story given the overall arc of her various careers, even though most music critics would agree that All Hail the Queen and 1993's Black Reign are her only records of any importance. She would never again reach the heights of Queen as her artistic energies became increasingly diversified (she started her two decades-plus career of appearing in movies and television series in 1991, the same year that she would release her sophomore album).

But based on the quality of All Hail the Queen, which came when all of Queen Latifah's energy as a performer was focused solely on making music, you can't help but wonder what kind of albums she might have made if her only passion was being a rapper. We'll obviously never know, but this record stands the test of time, and if you're a fan of 80s hip hop but don't have this one in your collection, it's time to rectify that omission.

7.28.14

Mixtape: 1989

Track 5
"Waterfall"
The Stone Roses
The Stone Roses

Let's get this out of the way first: the Stone Roses' self-titled debut album is one of the best records ever released. If you don't agree with me on that, there's probably not a lot we have in common musically. And for you real music nerds out there, the album I'm specifically referring to is the expanded US release (the third version of the album) that included both the earlier UK single "Elephant Stone" and "Fool's Gold", which was released as a single subsequent to the album's original release in England.

In many ways the Stone Roses were both the culmination and the resolution of the tension in Manchester between guitar bands (led by the Smiths and Johnny Marr) and synthesizer-based dance club bands (led by New Order)——with the incredible John Squire on guitar, the band was rooted in a guitar aethestic, but they were also pop enough to be danceable, and every now and then, they released something like "Fool's Gold", which was explicitly designed for the emerging rave culture.

(Sidenote: fellow Manchurians the Charlatans, who were also huge during this period, may have actually straddled the line between guitar band and dance band better, because keyboards were featured much more prominently in their first few albums, but the Stone Roses were the flagbearers for the Madchester scene——they were the first of this breed to make it big, and many of those that would come later were just imitating what they had done. I wouldn't argue that the Charlatans belong in this category even though they were clearly part of the Madchester wave——their career was too long and varied for them to be accused of being mere posers——but they nonetheless were following a path that had already been cleared by the Stone Roses.)

Like their godfathers the Smiths, the Stone Roses never really broke through in a big way in America, but they were huge in their native UK. And that turned out to be their real problem in terms of establishing a legacy: they were so successful that they ended up spending several years after the release of their debut partying in a rented mansion and occasionally recording music. Many dates for the release of their sophomore album came and went with no actual new material, to the point where it became the Chinese Democracy of its time: fans of the band began to treat the second album (eventually released in 1994 and cheekily titled Second Coming) as a mythical object that would never actually come into being. You waited for it, you hoped for it, you imagined what it might sound like, but as time went on, you slowly began to accept that it would never exist.

This album is so full of amazing tracks that I probably could have picked one at random and felt good about putting it on this mixtape, but "Waterfall" was the first song I absolutely fell in love with, and the band itself must have been pretty pleased with it t0o: not content to simply have it as the fourth track, they played the backing track BACKWARDS, had singer Ian Brown add new vocals, called it "Don't Stop", and made it fifth track——immediately after "Waterfall".

7.29.14

Mixtape: 1989

Track 6
"You're The One Lee"
Me And Mr. Ray
Miracle Legion

I don't think Miracle Legion had a chance at being a band with a bigger following no matter what their timing had been, but then again, when I first heard Blind Melon's "No Rain", I thought I had somehow missed a new Miracle Legion album release, so maybe there was at least a chance for them to have had one big single. Because there are some incredibly catchy songs in their catalog, and there's same sense of wonder and hope that pervades their work that made "No Rain" so appealing. This album and its follow up, Drenched, are two of my favorite records from the late 80s and early 90s——they're little undiscovered gems that are deserving of much wider recognition.

I don't know if "You're the One Lee" (the "one Lee" part is pronounced "only" in the chorus) is absolutely my favorite song from this record, but I loved it from the first second I heard it and I love it just as much still. If you've never heard of Miracle Legion and you given this song a try and have any reaction other than complete infatuation, this band's probably not for you (also: there's probably something wrong with your brain or your ears or both).

Singer Mark Mulcahy's voice may take some listeners a little while to get used to, but I find it absolutely charming, and it's a big part of the band's unique sound. It reminds me of Fine Young Cannibals' singer Roland Gift's similarly unusual voice in that it's so distinctive it gives a character to the songs no other singer could and becomes an indelible part of the band's sound.

The title Me and Mr. Ray refers to Mulcahy and guitarist Ray Neal, who became a duo for this album after releasing two earlier albums with a different sound as a more traditional four piece. When I saw them on tour in support of this record, they played with a full band, but the chemistry and friendship between the two principals was apparent, and their interactions were a big part of the band's live appeal.

I was so taken with band, and so naive at that point about how the music industry worked, that I just assumed that they would always be around, making great records and going out on tour so I could see them play at least once a year. But the show I saw in 1989 at the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill was the only chance I ever got to see them live, and despite another brilliant album in 1992, they essentially ceased to exist by 1993 as Mulcahy turned his attention to other projects (they would release another record in 1997, but the vibe was gone and the quality of the songs wasn't the same).

So I'm grateful for the one chance I had to see them live, and even more thankful that Me and Mr. Ray and Drenched made it across the my own personal digital divide and will be part of my music collection forever (although I'm puzzled by the fact that first two records are available in MP3 format but these two records are not). These records made me feel young even when I was young, and it's nice to feel that once again that whenever I revisit them.

7.30.14
Okay. I need a few days to polish up the next few mixtape entries, so back to a little more typical programming for now.

First up, a new song/video from Titus Andronicus, one from their new 7 inch series (it's unclear if these are going to be standalone releases or part of the new double album that's coming out sometime in the next year) called "Stranded (On My Own)":

This is not a bad song, and it would have been perfectly fine as a track on their most recent album, Local Business. But that was also their least interesting record, and with the promise of a double concept album on the horizon, I was hoping for a return to the magnificence of their first two releases, especially their sophomore effort, The Monitor.

I can't stop listening to frontman Patrick Stickles' vocals on this track, though——the slurring and lazy pronunciation is clearly intention, but I'm trying to figure out the meaning behind it. He's always sounded like Conor Oberst would sound fronting a punk band, and he's always seemed to resent that, so I'm wondering if this is an attempt to move away from that obvious comparison.

But it does a disservice to his lyrics, and on the times when he manages not to sound like Oberst, he instead sounds like Mick Jones trying with all his might to sound like Joe Strummer. Which is just kind of weird.

7.31.14
Next up: a new track from from Spoon's forthcoming They Want My Soul, this one titled "Inside Out" (it seems almost inconcievable that there's not already a Spoon song with this title):

This has a strange, dreamlike feel to it, but it's still unmistakably Spoon, and you have to wonder if the slight tinkering with the formula is at least partially a result of frontman Britt Daniel's recent Divine Fits side project, and the addition of Divine Fits member Alex Fischel to Spoon's permanent lineup in the wake of that collaboration.

Spoon haters would probably choose to interpret the following statement as a criticism, but Spoon might be the most consistent band over the last 15 years. But I really like their sound and their approach, so from my point of view this is a high compliment.