9.2.14
I've spent the last couple of months working my way through Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy, starting with Quicksilver, then The Confusion, and now finishing with The System of the World.

The final volume was all I read during my beach vacation last week, and I had an epiphany while listening to a random shuffle of songs while doing my nightly run on the beach: "Quay Cur", the ten-and-a-half minute long opening track from Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat came on, and I realized instantly that listening to Blueberry Boat was the musical equivalent to reading a Stephenson novel, and due to its fascination with boats and pirates, it was probably most thematically similar to the Baroque Cycle.

I'm not going to go into further detail trying to explain this link, but I felt it immediately in my bones, and I can almost guarantee that anyone else who has fallen in love with Blueberry Boat and the Baroque Cycle would agree with me. Now, there may be only a single digit number of those people in the entire world, but still...

9.3.14
It often seems like the fortnightly $5 MP3 album deals from Amazon are overloaded with either great albums that I already own or albums that are critically revered that I don't own yet, and the current selection is definitely one of the former——the must-haves this month are extensive. Here are my picks:

Must-haves: Kanye West's Graduation, the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Tom Waits' Bone Machine, the Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground and The Velvet Underground and Nico, Iggy Pop's Lust for Life, the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head, XTC's Skylarking, Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Drive-By Truckers' Southern Rock Opera (this is a double album that actually deserves two discs, so it's an especially good bargain at $5), Yeah Yeah Yeahs' It's Blitz!, the Replacements' Tim, and Elvis Costello's This Year's Model.

Recommended: Massive Attack's Mezzanine, the Decemberists' The King Is Dead and The Crane Wife, Nine Inch Nails' Broken, the Beastie Boys' Ill Communication, U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind, the Cure's Mixed Up (I usually hate remix albums, but this one is pretty decent, and the reworking of "Close to Me"——one of my favorite Cure songs——rivals the original), Sting's ...Nothing Like the Sun, Beck's Modern Guilt, King Tuff's Was Dead, and Sigur Ros' ().

I might buy: Sigur Ros' Takk..., Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left (I'm torn on this one——I loved Pink Moon and hated Bryter Layter, so I need to be convinced that this one has a lot more of the former than the latter), the National's Cherry Tree, Melvins' Tres Cabrones, the Stooges' Fun House, and Jay-Z's The Blueprint.

9.4.14
TV on the Radio have announced a new album, Seeds, and shared a track, "Happy Idiot":

I've been a fan of this band for a long time, and I always look forward to their releases, but aside from Tunde Adebimpe's unmistakable voice, I would never have guessed that this was a TV on the Radio track. One of the great things about this band is their spirit of adventurousness, and their ability to constantly explore new musical territory, but they've always done that within a framework of a certain style, a certain sound.

My indifferent reaction to this track doesn't mean that there's not still a possibility that the rest of this album will be great. But given how band's tend to lead with a strong track when teasing an album, it's not a good sign that this track is unremarkable at best.

9.5.14
Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O. is about to release a new album called Crush Songs that's not really new at all: it's home demos she recorded back in 2006 that she's now releasing as an album. And now she has shared a track from the album, "Day Go By":

I was very disappointed with Yeah Yeah Yeahs 2013 effort, Mosquito, but these songs are from the period between 2006's Show Your Bones and 2009's It's Blitz!, the band's most consistent and productive period, and this song sounds like it could have been a demo for a song that ended up on one of those records.

I generally like lo-fi stuff (or at least don't mind it), and I've been listening to the ever lower-fi American Weekend from Waxahatchee, so "Day Go By" sounds polished by comparison. If the rest of the songs are as good as this one, I could see this record becoming a companion piece for American Weekend when I'm in the mood for simple acoustic songs with a female singer.

9.8.14
Jens Lekman recently shared a 33 minute mixtape, the WWJD Mixtape (What Would Jens Do?) on Soundcloud (you can stream it but not download it because it features some songs he doesn't own the copyright for, but I was able to find a downloadable version, and if I can do it, anyone can), the highlights of which are three new songs from Jens: "WWJD", "What's That Perfume You Wear?", and "I Remember".

"WWJD" is the main attraction here: it's easily the strongest of the new songs, and although it could be the centerpiece for a new album, Jens says that he's releasing it in this format because it doesn't fit the rules he's set for himself for his new album. So my guess is that at some point it ends up on an officially released EP, and it wouldn't surprise me if the other two songs show up on that as well.

"Perfume" is a fun and goofy (I'd love to see the grin on his face when he performs it live), but there's not a whole lot of substance——mostly it seems like an excuse for him to overload a track with steel drums. And like many of the songs from other artists on this mixtape, "I Remember" has a distinct reggae vibe, which he's played around with before (most recent example: "So This Guy at My Office" from the An Argument With Myself EP), but never very successfully. I love this guy, so it's very hard for me to say anything bad about his music, but last two tracks are definitely b-side or EP fodder.

Overall, the mix hangs together very well——it would definitely work for a day at the beach or a summer evening garden party. Although how you would play it in those places given that you can only stream it from Soundcloud I do not know...g

9.9.14
The Strokes' Julian Casablancas is releasing a new album (Tyranny) with a new side project, the Voidz, and they have released a video for one of the tracks, "Where No Eagles Fly":

I like this better than any of Casablancas' other non-Strokes project, and frankly, it's better than any song the Strokes themselves have released since 2006's First Impressions of Earth.

You can't get away from Strokes comparisons when listening to anything with Casablancas as a primary creative force——aside from his distinctive voice, there are always elements of the Strokes sound that creep into the songs. So if I was going to describe this in the context of the Strokes, I might describe it as a more angsty, less bored version of the band that is obsessed with early 80s goth/industrial postpunk (Joy Division, Bauhaus, Gang of Four, etc.).

And that sounds like the kind of band I'd want to listen to, so I'm kind of interested to see if the rest of the album holds up to this comparison.

9.10.14
Cross posting to Brain Coral and Notes since it's relevant to both sites:

So in case you weren't on planet Earth yesterday when Apple announced its new products, the iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch (and despite what they say, Apple haters are as obsessed with these product launch media events as the members of the cult are), the event concluded not only with U2 performing a new song, "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)", but with the announcement of a new album, Songs of Innocence. The kicker: the album was immediately made available worldwide for free to anyone with an active iTunes account.

What's more, it will remain free to anyone who sets up a new iTunes account between now and October 13, after which the album will get a traditional physical release and presumably be available for a price digitally from all digital retailers. And it's not like either of these entities needed the publicity from a stunt like this, but it still made for one of the most compelling product launch shows since the original iPhone was unveiled.

Apple paid a price for this exclusivity and for the ability to give the record away, but almost no matter what they paid (I'm assuming it's in the tens of millions of dollars), it could end up being cheap compared to the cost of getting new users into their ecosystem through other ways. Here's why this is important: in order to download the album, you have to have an iTunes account, and in order to set up an iTunes account, you have to add at least one credit card to that account. And Apple really, really wants you to have a credit card linked to their services.

This is because not only will getting people who have so far resisted any entry into the iTunes ecosystem now be more likely to buy other music, movies, etc., from the service, which may in turn make them more open to the possibility of purchasing Apple hardware, but because of another new initiative that Apple announced yesterday: Apple Pay, a payment system that will let you pay for goods and services in brick and mortar vendors from your iPhone or Apple Watch without you having to share your credit card number directly with the vendor (there are also ways of getting your credit cards linked to your device without sharing that info with Apple directly, but I'm guessing most people will end up using the credit card linked to their iTunes account, which is more easily added to the payment service).

Like many of the services and devices that Apple is the standard bearer for, many companies, including some of their biggest competitors (like Google and their Google Wallet service), have already rolled out something similar that has yet to gain widespread mass acceptance. But as with the iPod and iTunes (these are the best examples of Apple's ability to create a better user experience for a category that already existed in the marketplace and dominate that category for years to come), if Apple can refine this experience and integrate it with its ecosystem of hardware products, they could end up once again becoming the flag bearers for this technology.

It's unclear to me at this point if they get any profit from this (the credit card companies will still take their percentage, but it's hard for me to believe that either those companies or the vendors selling you stuff will be willing to give up a percentage to Apple) or if this is just another value-add for their ecosystem to keep current customers locked in and entice new customers to join, but as one of those already heavily invested in that ecosystem, I don't much care——I benefit from this functionality without having to do anything more than install iOS 8 when it is released later this month and wait for the official launch of the service in October.

9.11.14
tall buildings shake...

9.12.14
I figured the further back in time I went with the National's catalog, the less I would find to like——2007's Boxer was my first record, and on the strength of that I eventually got 2005's Alligator, but didn't care for it nearly as much. So I thought going all the way back to their eponymous debut from 2001 would find the band far from the sound that I love.

But both The National and 2003's Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers were being offered by Amazon for $5 for the MP3 version, so I took a chance and got them both. Surprisingly, their debut is pretty incredible——even though it's not as complex as some of their later material, the basic songs are all pretty strong, and overall I think this record has moved into second place behind Boxer in their catalog.

Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers is another story——it's full of the kinds of missteps that I had expected to find as I went further back in time with the band. There are still elements of the band that they would become, but there are lots of red herrings, and they definitely feel like a band in search of a voice. Which is confusing, because the same voice that I associate with the band now that they have entered their mature stage is the one that shine through on their debut.

I guess it's just the sophomore slump in this case, because Sad Songs is definitely the weakest record of their career——even Alligator, which I previously viewed as their weakest record, is much more confident and assured, and much more reflective of who they are.

9.15.14
I know that I'm old and solidly in whatever might be considered U2's prime demographic, but I just don't see why everyone is freaking out about the band giving away their latest album, Songs of Innocence, for free on iTunes (or not actually for free, since Apple is paying them some undoubtedly astronomical sum for the privilege, but free for listeners who have an iTunes account). There's a very small subset of users who have automatic downloads of purchases turned on who can't get rid of it without disabling that setting, but otherwise you choose whether you download it or not——it's there if you want it (and will only be there through mid-October for no cost), but otherwise it's not bothering you.

As for the album itself: despite the retro, lo-fi artwork and the surprise release (both of which recall Kanye West's Yeezus, so no points for originality for U2), along with the backstory that this album is a return to the pre-U2 days of their youths in Dublin, this is not a return to the early days of their sound and emotional intensity.

Instead, it's pretty much exactly what you would expect: a couple of decent songs scattered amongst a lot of forgettable tunes that could be swapped into any of their albums released since 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind (and that's from the generous viewpoint of a longtime fan who is trying to find something nice to say about the album).

They've been making noise about releasing another album in the very near future (which would almost have to be called Songs of Experience), so it's possible that this is a b-sides and leftovers collection that just happens to precede the album that it is an appendage to, but even if they are planning to release a companion piece soon, I'm guessing that this is really the first half of a double album——I'm not expecting anything else that came out of these sessions to be demonstrably better than this record.

I was hoping that working with Danger Mouse would have revived the band a bit, but that doesn't seem to have happened——instead, it's just recent-vintage average U2 with even glossier production than normal and with none of the quirks and odd turns that I've come to expect from Danger Mouse. It seems like a missed opportunity on so many levels, but I'm not sure if the band is capable of anything else at this point.

9.16.14
New $5 MP3 album deals from Amazon:

Must-haves: Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream, John Mellencamp's Uh-Huh and Scarecrow, Beck's Mellow Gold, Helmet's Meantime, Brian Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets, the Replacements' Pleased to Meet Me, Elliott Smith's Figure 8, Sonic Youth's Goo, Joe Jackon's Look Sharp!, Melvins' Stag, Big Country's The Crossing, Cut Copy's In Ghost Colours, Queen Latifah's All Hail the Queen, and the Ramones' Ramones.

Recommended: O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack, U2's War, Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger, Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak, Bob Mould's Beauty and Ruin, Johnny Cash's American Recordings, R.E.M.'s Document, Elvis Costello's Armed Forces, Get Happy, and Imperial Bedroom, Peter Bjorn and John's Writer's Block, Tokyo Police Club's Forcefield, the Decemberists' The Hazards of Love, TV on the Radio's Return to Cookie Mountain, the Sundays Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, PJ Harvey's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die's Whenever, If Ever, and Q-Tip's The Renaissance.

I might buy: Parquet Courts' Sunbathing Animal, the Pretenders' Learning to Crawl and Get Close, Stereolab's Sound-Dust, the Ramones' Leave Home and End of the Century, and Caribou's Andorra.

9.17.14
The new Death From Above 1979 album, The Physical World, is their first in ten years (and their second altogether——the duo broke up for an extended period after touring in support of their debut, You're A Woman, I'm a Machine), but it's pretty much exactly what you would have expected if they had created it along a more normal release timeline of one or two years between albums.

It's not quite as dense or heavy as Machine (although it's still pretty intense), and it doesn't move at quite the breakneck speed of its predecessor (although it's still fast-paced), but these aren't necessarily negatives. The hooks that have always underpinned their songs are allowed to come to the forefront a bit more, the vocals are higher and more prominent in the mix, and the guitars have a deeper, more gutteral growl to them, which gives an overall impression of the band being more within expected norms for loud, fast guitar music, but their signature sound remains intact.

My guess is that this record would be more palatable to mainstream listeners because the production elements are more familiar, but it's not going to alienate anyone who loved their previous record (although with this long between releases, they might have a bit of work to do to remind people that they're back).

9.18.14
I continue to buy physical CDs (which I immediately rip and listen to exclusively in the digital form) when it's not overly expensive, mostly because I am very slow to change my ways and because I do have concerns about how the law is going to end up viewing digital collections of books and music (CDs I can legally pass on to others, but the final jugdment about digital tracks has not yet been decided).

Most of the time this works out fine——I have a physical artifact that I actually own, but I still typically get instant gratification in the form of instant access to MP3 files for the album (so I often don't have to rip the CD at all). But the Death From Above 1979 CD that I wrote about yesterday wasn't one of the ones that came with a free download, and for the first time, I had the kind of problems with it that made me consider moving to digital purchases exclusively.

When I ripped the tracks, all of them seemed to come across fine, but then I noticed some annoying skips on "Virgins" (which quickly became my favorite song on the album) and "Trainwreck 1979" (the lead single). So I put the CD back into the drive and re-ripped those two tracks, but again, there were skips and gaps in the digital versions. Normally I could address this with the iTunes Match service, which, when it finds tracks in your library, allows you to delete the original ripped versions and download the same versions that you would get from the iTunes store, but because of the missing data in the tracks, iTunes Match didn't see them as a match (the songs that ripped cleanly were seen as matches), and so wouldn't allow me to download clean versions.

I examined the CD, and its surface was perfect, so that wasn't the problem. I tried to re-rip the tracks two more times before giving up; I just couldn't get clean versions from the CD. To my extreme irritation, I ended up having to purchase digital versions of those two songs and load those into my library after deleting the flawed versions ripped from the CD. So not only did I pay slightly more for the CD than I would have for the digital version of the album, I ended up spending a couple of bucks more for songs that I couldn't pull cleanly off the CD.

Given that the only logical objection to purchasing digital over physical albums at this point is my concern about copyright, I really wonder how long I can keep this up, especially given that a significant number of my purchases end up being purely digital anyway due to sales on Amazon, etc. A couple more experiences like this one, and I'm likely to give up on purchasing CDs as my preferred format.

(And I know I'd still be behind the curve even if I went to purely digital purchases——most people have moved on to streaming services and pay monthly subscriptions instead of buying music in any form, but I honestly don't think that model is sustainable because it drastically devalues music and makes it much harder for artists to make a living. Plus your selections are limited to what's in the library for that service, and while those libraries are extensive, they are by no means comprehensive, especially for someone with some niche tastes from the past 30 years of music.)

9.25.14
Kendrick Lamar released a new single, "i", and shared it on Soundcloud:

The more positive lyrical vibe here reminds me of his debut, Section.80, but musically this is way off the charts from anything he's done before, and I'm not really sure I'm digging it. If I'm being generous, I could say that it's taking some influences from Outkast, but I want to be mean, I'd say that it sounds like a collaboration with the Black Eyed Peas.

I loved good kid, m.A.A.d City, and I've been waiting for its follow up with nearly the same level of anticipation that I have for Frank Ocean's next album, but if this is an indicator of the direction Kendrick is headed, I'm not sure I'm going to take this journey with him.

9.26.14
Thom Yorke released a new solo album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, and shared the first song, "Brain in a Bottle":

This immediately sounds very familiar if you've listened to his other non-Radiohead releases, Eraser (his first solo album) and AMOK (his record with Atoms for Peace), but especially Eraser.

The most interesting thing about it so far (I haven't downloaded it yet, and so therefore haven't heard anything but "Brain in a Bottle") is the way he chose to release it: he made a bundle on BitTorrent and put a pay gate around it, so that you have to pay $6 to be able to access and download the files.

He explained in a press release that he did this as an experiment to see if this platform could be used by artists to digitally release their music without having to pay a percentage cut to the storefronts like iTunes or Amazon that typically host and distribute the albums online. Which is an interesting idea, but as with the In Rainbows experiment (where Radiohead released a record online with a pay-what-you-want model), it's likely going to work better for established bands with devoted followings than it will for up and coming artists who need some of the promotional assistance that a record label can provide.