This one indulges in his occasionally penchant for reggae-inspired tracks, which rarely turns out well, but this song is loads better than the last couple in this series, faux island groove notwithstanding. This is actually about the level of quality I expected from this series of songs, so I'm not too disappointed, and I'm grateful that several of the first few songs he posted are actually better than I thought he would deliver in this song-a-week format.
3.3.15 Katie Crutchfield has shared a second track from Waxahatchee's upcoming third album, Ivy Tripp. This one is called "Under a Rock":
This sounds a lot more what I would expect from this record than the previously shared track, "Air"——it would not be a perfect fit for Cerulean Salt, but it sounds a lot more like what we heard on that record.
Getting very excited about this album, and I'm a little disappointed that it's only coming out a few days before I get to see the band live——I'll really have to gorge on this one to get to know it well enough to recognize everything when it's played in concert.
3.4.15 Death Cab for Cutie have shared a second track from their upcoming album Kintsugi, this one titled "No Room in Frame":
I like this one quite a bit more than the first shared track, "Black Sun", but on the scale of Death Cab songs from the last decade or so, this one is above average but not particularly outstanding. It has grown on me the five times I've listened to it, though, and the fact that I've taken the trouble to listen to it five times probably also says something positive about it.
3.5.15 Built to Spill have annouced a new album, Untethered Moon, and have shared a track from that record, "Living Zoo":
This is right on the edge of my tolerance threshold/sweet spot for Built to Spill: it starts out with the proggy stuff that I'm not especially fond of, but right before it gets to the point where I stop listening, the meat of the song kicks in, and once that happens, I'm in.
I'm likely to preorder this one, which is taking a bit of chance——in my past experience with this band, tracks like this one are either singular moments surrounded by a lot of LOOOONG indie prog, or they make up the majority of the album, and you really don't know which kind of record you're going to get until you listen to it. But I like this track, and I like this band generally, so I'm willing to take a chance.
3.6.15 Best Coast have a new album out called California Nights, and they recently shared the title track:
This is hardly what I would have expected from Bethany Cosentino for a track called "California Nights" given her sunnier, poppier take on the band's home state, and frankly, I'm not sure she has the voice to carry this hazy, dreamlike, slower-paced song.
Despite my longstanding inner conflict about liking Best Coast, I tend to buy their records because even though I'm not sure I like Cosentino as a person, I generally like her music. But I don't think this one's going to be a preorder based on this song——I need to hear more before I can commit dollars.
3.9.15 Jens Lekman, "Postcard #10":
We seem to be climging out of the valley and getting back to some decent and possibly even good tracks again. This track isn't outstanding in demo form that it's taking now, but it's very listenable, and you can imagine it growing into something better with a little time and attention.
3.10.15 Modest Mouse have shared yet another song from the upcoming Strangers to Ourselves, this one titled "Of Course We Know":
This one's a bit of a droning plodder in the beginning before moving on to some pretty-in-a-creepy-minor-key-kind-of-way piano and near-whispered vocals. These guys must be feeling pretty good about this record, because this will never be a single and likely won't help sell the album, but it's not without some charm for fans.
3.11.15 Sufjan Stevens has shared a second song, "Should Have Known Better", from his soon-to-be released album Carrie & Lowell:
This song is on the verge of making me fall in love with Sufjan again, despite the complete lack of anything for me to love in nearly a decade. But it's at least enough to make me preorder this record now.
3.12.15 Mikal Cronin, one of my favorite up-and-coming punk/lo-fi artists, has announced a new album, MCIII (following Mikal Cronin and MCII), and has shared the song "ii) Gold":
You rarely get a bad track from this guy, and this one (which is presumably the second song on the track list) gives me every confidence that this record is going to live up to his previous two. Loud, catchy, and a little off-kilter——if that description makes you swoon a bit, you should check this guy out.
3.13.15 Death Cab for Cutie have shared "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive", a second track from the upcoming Kintsugi:
This is how I would describe this: a driving guitar pop song that reminds me a little of the parts of 70s pre-punk AM rock borrowed most effectively in the 90s by Smashing Pumpkins. And if I heard it described that way without hearing it, I'm not sure how much desire I'd have to listen to it.
But I LOVE this song——if they're going to evolve away from their core sound with the departure of founding guitarist Chris Walla, these are the kinds of weird little journeys I'm willing to take with them.
3.16.15 Jens Lekman, "Postcard #11":
Another ballad-y type song this week, but a nice little track. I was worried a few weeks ago that he had mapped out the first five or six songs and after that he had run out of ideas, but we seem to be settling into the kind of pleasant but not amazing tracks that I imagined this series would turn out to be under the best possible circumstances——after all, 52 songs is just about equal to his entire catalog after 10 years of releases, so doubling that output in a single year is no small challenge.
3.17.15
I have tickets to see the Church tonight, who I saw for the first and only time about four years ago. It's at a venue I haven't been to before, so I always freak out about finding parking (as usual, I'm going solo), but they put on such a great show the last time I saw them that I can't not see them again.
They also got an album sale out of my ticket purchase, because I know they're going to play a ton of stuff off the just-released Further Deeper, and I wanted to be at least a little familiar with it before I saw the songs live.
It's so hard to judge how a new album compares to songs I first fell in love with almost 30(!) years ago, but one trick I've learned is to put my favorite stuff from a band into a playlist, add all the songs on the new album, and then play it all on shuffle. Even though the new songs will stand out because I don't know them by heart, it will still give a good sense of whether the new record is faithful to the sound of the band, even if the songs themselves might not be as strong.
That's just what I did with Further Deeper, and it holds up surprisingly well against the strongest part of their catalog from the mid 80s to early 90s.
There are only two real standouts——"Laurel Canyon" and closing track "Miami"——but there are a few other good songs on the record, and no real clunkers.
(It occurs to me that if frontman and primary songwriter Steve Kilbey wants to make an album that I will love through and through, he should just write an album full of songs about places——since 1990's Gold Afternoon Fix, almost every song that I love from the Church is about a place: "Metropolis", "City", "Louisiana", "Laurel Canyon", and "Miami".)
3.18.15
I'm just going to admit it: I don't get all the hype around Father John Misty. Maybe his record will be one that I come back to in five years and magically discover and wonder why I didn't hear it back when I first listened to it, but whatever it is everyone else is drooling over just isn't doing anything for me.
3.19.15
I haven't gone through my recommended purchases for Amazon's $5 MP3 album deals in a few months, partly because they didn't change from Dec 1 to Jan 31, and partly because the selections in the intervening time haven't been that numerous or great. But the most recent refresh is worth documenting:
Must-haves: Radiohead'sKid A, Sufjan Stevens' Michigan, Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombones, Kendrick Lamar'sgood kid, m.A.A.d city, Whiskeytown'sStrangers Almanac, and Helmet'sMeantime.
Recommended: Drive-By Truckers' Decoration Day, Fiona Apple'sTidal, Elvis Costello'sArmed Forces, Peter Bjorn and John'sWriter's Block, Rufus Wainwright'sPoses, Eleanor Friedberger'sPersonal Record, and the Go! Team'sRolling Blackouts.
I might buy: the Minus 5'sKillingsworth, Caribou'sOur Love, and Jason Isbell'sSirens of the Ditch.
3.20.15
I've purchased quite a few new albums in 2015, but there's nothing I've really fallen in love with, and that's reflected in the number of 5 star tracks so far: zero.
The next couple of months hold the promise of a slew of new records from acts I've loved in the past, but I would have said the same thing of this last quarter, when we saw releases from the Decemberists, Modest Mouse, Belle & Sebastian,Sleater-Kinney, and of Montreal, each of whom are responsible for at least two albums that I absolutely adore.
And none of those releases was terrible (with the possible exception of the Decemberists, simply because it was so far off in quality from their previous work), but none of them had a single track that blew me away, much to my disappointment (although the Sleater-Kinney record overall was very good, and the of Montreal was a nice recovery from their previous release, which was their only release in a decade that I haven't enjoyed).
Anyway. Hopefully the next round of releses will be better——no 5 star songs by the halfway would be unprecedented.
3.23.15 Deerhoof tonight, with Perfect Pussy opening, at my favorite club in Atlanta, the Earl. Bonus: it's a no smoking gig per request of the band, removing the only real complaint I have about seeing shows in this venue.
3.24.15 Built to Spill have shared a second track from the Untethered Moon, this one titled "Never Be the Same":
This is about as close to a standard indie guitar pop song as this band is capable of producing, and combined with my instant like of the other track they've shared from the record, I'm increasingly glad that I preordered this album. These two could turn out to be the outliers, but I've got my fingers crossed that they've decided to make another relatively straightforward, non-proggy album like Keep It Like a Secret or Ancient Melodies of the Future.
3.25.15 Blur have shared two more tracks from their upcoming album The Magic Whip, "There Are Too Many of Us" and "Lonesome Street":
"There Are Too Many of Us" is the less immediately listenable of the two, and the one that doesn't really remind me of Blur but instead something from one of Damon Albarn's innumberable side projects, but it grows on you.
"Lonesome Street", on the other hand, is the first tracked the band have shared from this record that sounds something like you would expect a 2015 Blur track to sound——despite a slowdown in the tempo just as the song gets going, it's the closest thing to the guitar pop that the band was known for that we've heard from Albarn since the last Blur album.
Despite the warm feeling of nostalgia it brings, and the disappointment you might initially feel of the weird speedbump that comes about 75 seconds in, the song is actually pretty flat after that (except for a quick reprise of that speedbump towards the end of the song), and given that it doesn't really change things up again, it goes on a touch too long.
Still, "Lonesome Street" gets me excited that we could get an album that is recognizable as Blur instead of just Damon Albarn, and as much as I tend to like Albarn's non-Blur collaborative work, that's really what I want from this record.
3.26.15
Before I write about the Deerhoof show, I need to tell you about seeing the Church at Terminal West. I'd never been to this venue before, and although it was a little hard to find (I drove past the entrance the first time, because it's as you're coming around a curve and down a hill), but parking was only $5 and was ample in a lot and garage right next to the club.
I normally get a Guiness when I go to shows, but it seemed especially appropriate on St. Patrick's Day, if a little too obvious for the hipster crowd.
But this crowd wasn't especially hipsterish, and for once I was far from the oldest person in attendance. I arrived about 20 minutes before the band got on stage (there was no opener), got my Guiness, and found a place about five bodies back from the stage.
I had never seen this band play live until a few years ago when I went to see them at the Birchmere in DC with my friend Tom, and they absolutely blew me away. That was the first time in a while that they had toured the US with their original lineup——guitarists Peter Koppes and Marty Wilson-Piper each have a habit of leaving the band for a few years in alternating stints——but this time, Wilson-Piper was on hiatus, so there was a new, younger guitarist taking his place on stage (who did an admirable job not only taking over his lead guitar lines but also did a pretty good impression of a younger version of the hulking man that Wilson-Piper has become).
They seem to have a pretty good idea of who is still coming to these shows, and it's not people who only know "Under the Milky Way", it's real fans, fans that have been followed for a significant portion of their 35 year career, and they acknowledged this by opening with "Is This Where You Live?", the strongest track from their debut album Of Skins and Heart.
The setlist was pretty heavy with tracks from their most recent album, Further Deeper, but this material held up pretty well against the older stuff. And they did play a couple of Starfish tracks, including "Under the Milky Way" (although you got the feeling this crowd wouldn't have been upset if they had forgone their signature track for one show), but they also scattered in tracks from across the rest of their catalog, including "Myrrh", the opening track from Heyday (still my favorite album), and "Metropolis" from Priest=Aura.
My only real gripe with the song selection was the inclusion of "The Disillusionist" from Priest=Aura, a track that is over-the-top cheesy on the album and which only gets worse when they perform it live and get their road manager to play bass so Steve Kilbey can free his hands up to get interpretive-dance theatrical during the live set. I remember wincing at this song at the last show, and it wasn't any easier to watch at this show. But I think I'm in the minority here——my impression is that most of their diehard fans love this song, and that it's as much of a staple of their live show as "Under the Milky Way".
They closed out the main set with "Miami", the closing track from Further Deeper and the perfect choice for a set ender before returning for a quick two-song encore. It was a great venue and a great show, and I'd gladly return to see another show here or gladly trek to see the band somewhere else.
3.27.15 Modest Mouse's new record, Strangers to Ourselves, has been out for a couple of weeks now, and although I know there was very little chance that they will ever again produce an album that I can get as obsessed with as I did The Moon and Antarctica or The Lonesome Crowded West, I'm finding myself pleasantly surprised by this.
And it's not necessarily because the songs are better than I expected them to be——there are a few listenable tracks, and some interesting excursions into weirdness, as well as the normal amount of should-have-been-b-sides that end up filling out most 15 track albums these days——but rather because of the attitude behind the whole thing.
This album has been eight years in the making, and when they last released a full-length, Modest Mouse had genuinely become a mainstream act that could be expected to sell a lot of records and have a couple of hit singles. But now there's a whole generation of kids who have become music purchasers (or music streamers, more likely) who have never had new music from the band to consume, and who may or may not have uncovered their older work (because after eight years, it's all older work now).
But instead of delivering a record that would satisfy all the fans who got into them during their popular period and give the label a chance to rope in tons of new, younger fans, they've given us an album that's almost unmarketable: there are no obvious singles, there's lots of slow/quiet or just plain odd stuff, and yet it's still far enough removed stylistically from their best material that you're not necessarily going to get their core fanbase to buy it, either. The whole record is a big fuck you to the record industry (and, I have to say, to the fans) who have been waiting so long for it, and that context somehow manages to give it back some of the cool that's missing from the body of songs themselves.
This one could grow on me, too——I have to remember that it took me a few months to fall in love with The Moon and Antarctica, and much longer for The Lonesome Crowded West (which I abandoned after a few listens and didn't return to until after Antarctica became the center of my musical universe). Again, I don't think it will get to the point where it will stand shoulder to shoulder with their pre-popularity stuff, but I already like it better than We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, and it could become my favorite record of the post-popularity era.
3.30.15
Still processing the new Iron & Wine and Sufjan Stevens releases, but the one thing they have in common is that they remind me of why I fell in love with these artists in the first place after a recent slowdown in their releases and a movement towards styles that don't appeal that much to me. I don't generally like music classified as folk, and both of these artists can be shoehorned into that category, but the generally the farther these guys have strayed from folk sounds, the less I've liked their music.
Iron & Wine makes it easy with this release, since the songs are actually pulled from the unreleased archives of their earliest recordings, but for Sufjan, this is all-new material, and there are moments on it that remind me of the first songs I ever heard from him, a six song EP of leftovers from the Michigan sesssions.
3.31.15
I had the best of intentions in posting my best of from 2014 very quickly after the turn of the new year, but then I promptly forgot to do it. And now it's the end of March.
April won't be the latest I've ever posted this, but I don't think it's ever stretched into May, so I need to tackle that posthaste.
